Crazy About Clara Chronicles
by KendrixTermina
Summary: Assorted writings detailing the Doctor's Clara-related monomania and their struggle to divine each other's meaning; certainly whouffle-tinged. Entry 08: [Paths] "Here they were, a perfectionist English teacher and a rebellious little miscreant all grown up, order versus chaos; They should have been natural enemies, but somehow they weren't." Maybe because they're both book worms?
1. Introductions

_"I think the Doctor is crazy about Clara, he loves her in a very deep way that is not just about romance. It goes to a deeper territory of affection."_

-Peter Capaldi

Hence, the title of this fic.

Welcome and thank you for your time, this will be a collection of assorted material dealing with the human schoolteacher Clara Oswald, and the Time Lord scholar known as the Doctor, and the complex, fascinating, deep, multilayered dynamic between the two, so far mostly little character oneshots, but might include longer multichapter things with plot later if I find the time. Will probably feature all Doctors at some point, but mostly 12 because he's just _delightful_.

But first, a little disclaimer: Don't bother with the lawyers, I freely admit that I do not own 'Doctor Who', and I'm not earning a single Euro with this.

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><p>Given the various recent revelations, there is probably no easy way to measure how long she's known him, or how long he's known her, but it probably sufficed to say that it probably wasn't the same number for each of them – What really mattered, in any case, were three years since he first appeared on her doorstep, unbidden, unexplained and yet unable to constrain a vastness of obvious affection, admiration and gratitude that she didn't remember earning.<p>

The sudden situation certainly _was_ as one could easily imagine, somewhat flattering, in a way she was embarrassed of, because really? Wasn't she supposed to be a mature person here? God knows she tried to be.

-But also somewhat frightening, the unknown beckoning her to take a step that she didn't know the consequences of.

Since then, she has seen quite a lot of him, perhaps more than he would ever have revealed by choice, were it not for that fine, insidious web of _circumstance_ that was woven through this universe – in his business, he'd see the ripples of an advent _something _longbefore he'd encounter the cause of the effect, and he'd continue to carry the darkness he found there for ever after. Maybe this once, it could be a lucky stroke for them, something true and solid to emerge out of the confusion, or at least, some part of her must have thought so, she fears – given the stakes and risks, the very idea should have been to ridiculous to even occur to her more than any such cheesy ridiculous thing, she wanted him _safe_, yet maybe some part of her had come to think that she knew all of him, that she had him well under control, because it was simply the natural tendency with which to approach the world when your greatest fear is being lost; Maybe she had indulgently neglected to keep her ego under wrap and become a little too proud the last time she'd noticed that subtle, subversive little twitching of his hands that indicated that he wanted his anxieties remedied with a hug, thought herself way too sure to have read him like a book.

On an intellectual level, she knew to be reasonable with her expectations, she had long valued the idea of a person who stood for morals, for showing the right way, of a deep, independent person who walked this world with firm confidence, so she tried to cultivate a sense of these qualities in herself, but it was a process that she had to put work into, not something that she could just rely on finding every time when her emotions weren't quite catching up with her mind and deserved better than to be ignored.

She knew well that, on a certain level, another person could never be fully understood, controlled or assessed by another, no matter how much information she managed to amass about them, people were dynamic, unpredictable balls of randomness, chemicals and defining decisions not even they themselves could fully fathom; Try as she might, there was simply a limit to how far she as a separate person who couldn't even see into their heads would be able to predict and plan for the reactions of any given person, not her family, not her students, not Danny or even herself – She didn't need to be told that she should be able to accept it, but it still _grated_ her, the thought of things, little things in her life that she didn't mind having around indefinitely turning into full blown _situations_ that required talking about, addressing and _reacting _that might be taken out of her hands.

So why, oh why, had she then insisted on associating herself with one of the _less_ predictable individuals roaming out in this universe? The little, frightening moments had always been there, the idea of being a mere ghost and the things he didn't tell her, but maybe she had been distracted by the rest of the whole, enough to be swept up in the stream of events until she found herself in a crashing time machine, staring a the lines and creaks of a face she had never seen before. It would occur to her later that perhaps that one image was the closest to encapsulating their entire relationship that a single moment could ever come: The two of them, staring at each other with nigh identical expressions of utmost bewilderment, each eying the other like they were the strangest, most inexplicable creature they had ever seen, not just with wonder, but just as much fear, fascinated by the kind of mystery that required equal measures of vice as well as virtue to pursue, and all this, _all this _none tool ong after they had been to hell and back.

As a teacher, answering questions was part of her job, and one of the things she always repeated to her students was that there was no such thing as a _stupid_ question for they were each an opportunity to learn something new, but there were certain types of questions that she would hail as very good, those who provided the best and most convenient of opportunities, a bridge to lead to broader, less clear-cut subjects, still pendant holes in our knowledge and patches of genuine, fundamental ambiguity in our reality, the sort of question that could not definitely be answered by finding one word or telling one story. The best questions out there were those who, upon closer inspection, blossomed into an entire tide of never ending enigmas.

His name was just a word in a book, his world just a rock full of ...basically _people_, but his mystery went far beyond that... And it was that very person she never consciously, but somehow implicitly assumed to have figured out, the person who had previously gone out of his way to keep her safe and comfortable, who ended up driving her up the wall like never before in her life.

It was like the discovery of the neutron; Just when she thought she knew everything, she found herself back at square one, with nothing but questions and hints of cracks and inconsistencies she had been missing all along. She was made to ask herself whether she even knew who he was, whether she hadn't misunderstood from the very beginning, what to do with the things that kept coming out of his mouth and how she could never tell wether he was being genuinely oblivious, offhandedly grumpy or deliberately passive-agressive. Why would she even put up with this abrasive, _astonishingly _insulting piece of _Teflon _and why would she bother to come up with ways to excuse him to the world, what was it was that made her go back to a world of fear and harsh decisions, and then wonder whether she even _should, _and why she had gone and stabbed him right into all these doubts and fears and uncertainties just as he had laid them bare, that man with the wildest, most terrifying eyes , eyes that could, in a manner of moments, switch to observing her with that lost, insecure expression, like he was trusting his everything to her guidance, his quiet voice requesting the same frankness back from her.

Where was the common denominator in that? What was she possibly supposed to make of him? Weren't there lines she had to draw, principles she was supposed to stick to, disrespect no one should be willing to accept no matter what?

There came that moment when they were together on that Space Train, racing past the ruins of entire star systems, when she found herself voicing the distinction that while she wasn't sure whether she could carry on with the space traveling and their "things", throwing him out of her life completely was a different affair she found herself far more reluctant with; They were, of course, practically inseparable, him and that moody time machine of his, but it made her think. About him, about how she came to see his point of view and to which degree that was a place from which she wanted to be looking at this world from, and whom those words about choices were really meant for, or spoken about. Was there something about her that Could actually _want_ this, the _horrible_ weight, the possibility of getting it all wrong, the knowledge that she could be tempted, that inner "philosopher" or "teacher" she used to think was the best part of her, wanting to see how her ideas and theories held up, to implement them in practice, playing the smartass even in the middle of the potential destruction, getting off on the power, even, or merely the thrill, and what did that make her?

Indeed, what was she, in the great scheme of things?

That man was a bossy, showy, insensitive liar, he was childish prick who hated to lose, secretive to the point of paranoia and at times downright _insufferable, _ but what exasperated her the most about him was that he led her to question herself, that he pushed her to examine her ideas and beliefs, to confront those very same traits in herself forced her to grow beyond what she had been before in the confines of her perfectly organized, relatively controllable comfort zone.

And, be it a virtue or a vice, in the end, she _wanted_ to be challenged; She _wanted_ to understand more about this world, its wonders and its truths, and is was this what bound them together, for better or for worse, this is what they shared with each other, what imbued their connection with more depth than any tangling of their time lines could ever have accomplished.

He really valued that side of her, too, no matter how difficult he might be from time to time, the part of her that pushed _him_ forward and made him aware of _his_ flaws, even joking that he ought to pay her, which, in a way, he already did in ways that no money on this world could compare to; She didn't know much about the many others who had come before her, apart from the occasional fond or hilarious or extraordinary anecdote, hints of a history, memories that carried too much weight to be mentioned any way but lightly; As far as she could tell, many of them had little ties to their place of origin to begin with, or had not been particularly satisfied with their lives; The usual pattern seemed to have been that they moved into his blue box full time, at most popping back now and then to pay a visit to any living family they might have, many of them eventually staying behind somewhere among the stars, having found a potential spouse or a place to apply their newly-found skills to their fullest potential, and she wasn't the type to think less of them just for that alone; If there was nothing worthwhile waiting for you wherever you lived, maybe leaving was exactly what you _should_ do.

But Clara herself had _not_ packed up immediately, quit her job and jumped into his spaceship, she had no reasons to do so – The things she had been doing in her life so far, her hobbies, her line of work, her love for working with children, her pursuits of her interests in art and philosophy, the time spent with her family, her students her colleagues and her all-time-favorite co-worker, Mr. Pink, whose very own, very different brand of quiet wisdom she had come to value, they were all exactly what she wanted to be doing, it was not always perfect, not always completely under control, but very much viable avenues to pursue different things that were important to her. Perhaps the regular Space Travel Days had simply become another component of that, a place to live and satisfied another part of her and share it with the one person who understood it like no one else could, the designated space for her to do awesome things with futuristic computers, do half of her communicating in the sort of silly lines she always wanted to say, but were guaranteed to lead to a major foot-in-mouth moment with, say, Danny, get to know new parts of herself and have her deep conversations about good, evil and the outer darkness... and among whatever shifts might have occurred between them after their visits to Trenzalore, those might be the one thing she wouldn't want to reverse for anything in the world; Before, he would probably have downplayed his doubts and worries, perhaps even tried to keep up a front for her like Vashtra had suggested, and, at most, requested a vague sort of comfort in a wordless, more physical way, but now, he might actually give her a straight answer as to what the actual matter is.

Even the times where she had felt like he'd left her behind, as much as they had scared her and thrown her into confusion, even when confronted with the possibility of things going out of control and the prospect of failing, she couldn't deny that he had always been there to collect her; It was easy to forget that he was not nearly as confident as his track record would suggest, or as omniscient as his boasting would have you think; Maybe that was another thing they had in common. Perhaps that was while it took her a while to conceive of the thought that perhaps, he thought that there were some situations (aside from "talking to people") that she might handle better than him, that she and those before her had always consistently shown him the way out even when he couldn't find it.

He has properly come to rely on her. Because he trusts her, because he knows she is capable, and frequently finds himself in situation where everything will be lost either way if he doesn't make full use of all the resources at his disposal.

And once she understood that, it was just got so much harder to think badly of him.

Maybe there was no such thing as an all-changing epiphany and the only way to answers, to doing _good_ was to endlessly doubt your own justice, to check again and again whether your current course was consistent with your ideals and correct it every time, to remind yourself of what it was you believed in. Maybe to love someone, in whatever way, was to love them with all their flaws, not even _in spite_ of them, but with the imperfections becoming just another part of the picture, that was still something troublesome to be kept in check, but, in moderate quantities, added a measure of uniqueness. Maybe to feel accepted, one must first accept oneself, a necessary step that the two of them just hadn't taken yet. Maybe one day, he would teach her what she already seemed to have taught _him_, without ever knowing it, how to let her guard down and show her true self to the world, warts and all, messy rough angles included. Imperfect as they may both be, the probability that they would _both_ decide to jump out of an airlock _at the same time _was negligible enough; Maybe they could make that journey together.

She had no way of knowing what tests and revelations might still be lurking in the dark of their personal future, or where their voyages would lead them, but whoever knew...

Both of them might just learn something new.


	2. Observations

It seems like like such a _silly_ observation to make, and she's sure that if she ever were to say it out loud, he'd never let her hear the end of it – But he can hardly expect her _not_ to spend any time looking at his face, or thinking about it, after went and _changed _it.

He has, as far as she can tell, roughly four distinct types of smile, that he employs depending on the context and the situation, as vague at his grasp on both these concepts can be at times.

The most frequent is, of course, the cheeky, cocky one he wears whenever he's in the process of showing off, or about to about to outwit someone, which essentially amounts to the same thing. He thinks he's so incredibly smart sometimes, and the worst is, he usually _is_, which makes the few times he isn't all the more elusive to him.

She may not be completely innocent in that department either, she absolutely got the feeling behind it, but in the end, it was always _her_ who ended up having to convince the locals to put up with him long enough for him to get them out of whatever mess they had gotten themselves into this time – but at the end of the day, when the problem was solved and he paused to do one of his little victory dances, the corners of that small, pleased smirk refusing to be suppressed, his attempt as a dark, imposing-looking costume subverted by these ridiculous white dots on his dress shirt, she wonders how it's possible that she ever failed to _see_ him.

Then, there's _that one grin_ that she would, and probably _had_ recognized in a thousand different times and places, the one that looked so utterly the same no matter what face he wore, so very contagious, wide, plastered everywhere, taking over the eyes, brimming with excitement, unfailing in the face of danger, when he was running towards the nearest explosion.

It was usually a sudden, momentary thing, but liable to stay for a while if he found something to gush about.

There was just some very particular, characteristic feature about the way it spread out from within, the wild, manic sparkle undimmed by the years, and it assured her that, no matter how much suffering he might have to face, his passion for this world was something he would never give up.

She had seen the bittersweet one quite often on their many adventures, a sight that was unexpectedly frequent on his last face when she stopped to think and consider it, which was probably why he'd done his best to avoid considerations like the plague; He'd try his hardest to conceal it all, to hold on to his ideas of wisdom and the resolve that such important moments deserved better than just sadness, but insidious as it was, the combined weight of lifetimes of loss, tragedy and regret would always seep through, hinting at a wealth of realized implications and similar stories he was only just holding back, connections and images that might occur to someone who knew his whole story, words he wished to say but decided to keep to himself, because it wouldn't be fair, because it wouldn't help, because he had much to atone for and aware that he should be starting right here, by putting someone else _first, _and it was moments like these that had her thoroughly convinced that, for all his flaws, imperfections and ambiguities and all the times she's wanted to smack him in the face and never see it again, she could never fully hate him with all of her heart, this man who'd readily give up all of himself to protect the ones he loved.

And she'd thought that was all of it, once upon a time, she though she had it all ordered and categorized, at least as far as the rough outline went, but it was then, after their venture on the Orient Express, when she though she had just gained another chuck of understanding, when the uneasy progression of her still uncertain feelings led her to a point where she decided that she would be staying with him after all, he went and surprised her all over again with the way his features just _melted_ into pure bliss, every bit as unfiltered as his harsh comments or darker musings could be, restrained only perhaps by a tinge of absolutely hopeless, school-boyish awkwardness around the corners.

It's not warm, exactly, but she can't come up with a good word to describe it without squeezing it too much into one particular interpretation and leaving out some of the many things it seems to express; The best she can manage is to call it "pretty", in the way a little girl might describe anything that makes her happy.

And she's also positive that she's seen this somewhere before in all the time she's known him, but she can't say when, perhaps it was always mixed up with something else, or maybe she hadn't learned to notice, maybe she hadn't payed attention to the right things;

When she thinks back to their earlier travels, there are obviously memories of moments that were difficult, but the default images that come up within her mind are of them always smiling, always happy together. Right after he changed, there were times when she wondered how long it had been since she'd last seen anything beyond cold harshness, anything positive at all come from his direction, but as he stands before her now, she is suddenly fiercely glad to know that he wouldn't bother with the pleasantries, because it wouldn't actually make the difficult situations any better, and she's seen that he'd rather face her disappointment than give her false hopes that will do her no good;

And because it allows her to know that, when he smiles at her like that, beaming like a newborn star, like the whole of his world raises or falls with her answer, it is as genuine as anything in this world can be.


	3. Carmen (Exactly what you deserve remix)

**Spoilers for "Dark Water". **Haven't seen "Death in Heaven" yet, waiting for it to hit the internets since I'm outside the anglosphere; This was originally partially intended as a venting piece for "Dark Water", but then I got held up, and in the end, I ended up completing this to scribble off my pre-finale anxiety. This series did a magnificent job of making me quite attached to both Clara, Twelve and the dynamics between the two, so I... I guess I _really_ hope they'll be alright...

**Carmen (Exactly what you deserve Remix)**

_Of all evil I deem you capable. Therefore I want the good from you. Verily I have often laughed at weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws._

_-Friedrich Nietzsche_

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><p>"All I need is one moment where I can exceed her speed."<p>

Its a line he once reads in a comic, slouching on a couch in a somewhat unorthodox position, mostly trying to pass the time while Martha was sleeping. It's one of these Japanese swordy-fighty stories, and he doesn't know how it begins, or even how it ends, because that is how he stumbles through stories, both in fiction and reality; The beginning is often boring, the author perhaps needing a while to get a definite grip on their style, and endings are just depressing – So he will barge in halfway through, perhaps to look up some reference he's seen somewhere else, and perhaps he will even stay a while and follow the threads on the story, only to put the books aside and perhaps come back decades later, to a wildly different part of it, or get lost in the pages after a trip to revisit his favorite moments of the story – what he likes about this particular one is that its protagonists, engineered to be human weapons through gruesome weapons, were still able to hold on to their personhood through their bonds with their comrades, and eventually rebelled against the organization that would prefer them as unfeeling, perfect soldiers when they had the potential to be so much more – The leader of the rebellion is one of his favorites, an usually level-headed, big sister-like figure who specializes on speed. In the current chapters, she was faced with the resurrected corpse of one of the most terrible, most impossibly fast warriors of the past, and basically uses the help of her comrades to defeat her either way, a message that he basically agrees with, but has seen executed too many times for it to really catch his eye – what gives him pause is something about the villainess herself, and the way she was outwitted.

She fell victim to her pride, as villains are wont to do, but there is more than that.

He can't even say what exactly it is that gives him pause, he _might_ get to the bottom of it if he took the time to process it, but does have a fair guess that the answer might be something he will not like. It just gets stuck in there somehow, the mental image of the resurrected villainess realizing that she cannot catch up, not even knowing that it was a clever trick and not hard-earned skill that allowed leader-girl to briefly beat her at her signature move, the way she charges her foe with single-minded focus at the expense of everything else, ending up destroyed in the crossfire of a nearby battle between a pair of unrelated monsters.

When he finds his way to the Dalek Asylum so many, many years later, the line is incandescent in is mind, resurfacing in the most unbidden manner when the understanding finally clicks into place.

And just like the villainess and those long forgotten pages of paper, he was lost the moment he was captivated, and captivated the moment he was exceeded.

Sure, there was also the irony, that a quick, metaphorical summary of all he found beautiful in this world would appear in the shape of all that he hated, that the Dalek's grotesque experiments to assimilate the 'human factor' would create something they couldn't control, that they, themselves products of mad science gone horribly right, would have their creations turn against their Masters because the Spark of person-hood refused to let itself be extinguished;

But he knew nothing of that when he sped down the corridors full of his wasted, ancient foes, deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness, beckoned, lured, _enticed _by a faraway voices that promised intrigue, power, and logistically impossible soufflés.

He doesn't know how she imagined herself, within the confines of her mind, and at the time, he doesn't even have a face to assign to her, but with those notes seeping into his consciousness, his mental image of her starts to resemble the character from the opera, an ophelian madlady in a dress of dazzling scarlet, flowers in her hair as she calls him forward – the music, the piece of art, a manifestation of self-expression that tells a story of love is perhaps the most suitable symbol for the ultimate defiance she has been unceasingly upholding for over a year, against all odds of a grim reality that even she does not know in full; After all, love, beauty or self-expression is something that these marching metal monstrosities could never understand and perhaps terrified them all the more for it – Announcing her continued refusal to surrender her identity with a fanfare of classical music was not just an impressive manifestation of willpower, it had _style. _

But perhaps it is also the same form that her splinters of awareness had taken, the ones she couldn't suppress; For along with the melody, the lyrics carried a warning, telling of a fickle, unpredictable woman as unattainable and unreachable as a puff of smoke, or a flower in the mirror, or the reflection of the full moon in the middle of a lake, or the sound itself as it rings out into orbit, transmitting from the depths of the Dalek Asylum.

"Prends garde à toi!" - "You best beware!"

"Si je t'aime, prends garde a toi."

If I love you, you best beware.

You best _beware_.

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><p>You best beware.<p>

For someone who valued his freedom so much, he sure didn't take all too well to isolation.

Every day he lived his dream of going somewhere new very far away, where no one would knew who he was, when he should long since have realized that every new fresh start would lead him back to the same old results as far as long as he took himself with him;

And where ever he went, there was chaos, perhaps, ultimately, because he did seek it out, and had this lovely blue box who was both very skilled at seeking it out, and just as curious as him to see what would result if she just fired him at the place.

It took him a long while, but after making a deliberate effort to scatter himself and she strips and snapshots of his story all over creation, it was, perhaps only a matter of time until he had found his way in all these near-catastrophes and nigh-apocalypses; He stole a _time machine_, he didn't just set out to see different _places_, not even places that were only available for a limited amount of years, but _events_ as well. And people, whether he knows of whatever extraordinary future might await them, or not; It's like this that he comes across a plethora of artists, musicians and writers, researchers, politicians and activists, freelance paranormal hunters or even legends, future presidents left and right, whether their started out as haughty know-it-alls given to him as unwanted aides or sassy schoolgirls he immediately clicked with; He gets to meet the last centurion, the warrior queen of Krontep, the Bad Wolf, the one and only Captain Jack Harkness, even the Most Important Woman in the universe, and they were all so utterly worth it, but an unintended consequence of his widespread involvement was, of course, that it was no longer that easy to withdraw him from the equation; And sooner or later, it was, perhaps, unavoidable that someone might try.

Oh, he had tried to cover his tracks, to mend his wicked ways, to erase himself from history, but the thing was, while her certainly didn't _like_ to be feared, there were times where it was _practical_, where _lives_ would be at stake and wouldn't allow him to even consider whether he could _afford _not to make use of his reputation, or to take steps to avoid leaving an impression.

Time could be an unexpectedly flexible thing sometimes, perhaps it was perfectly possible for many of these events to have flowed along their predetermined paths without his involvement, here and there, but _oh_, the cumulative effect, now that the connections _had_ been made. Little things he changed, that went on to influence and change other things, carrying his influence further through the fabric of reality like a bloodline; the effect of his deeds needn't even have been _positive_, at the bottom line, it was enough if they were _massive_. Pull him out at inopportune moments, and there'd be no telling whether entire chains of events wouldn't just fall to bits like a house of cards. At the very least, the people close to him would be affected, people he had _changed_ such as Vashtra or Strax; There was way more at stake here than just his own, measly life – and all this had eventually necessitated his entanglement in yet another major event, several events, that were really just a series of time travel accidents and what had been done to fix it but still touched him in a fairly personal way, as one assumed it would, to know that she always has been, and until the end of his days will be all around him, but what makes her 'impossible' is not merely her means of showing up, but what she is when she does and that was all _her_ – He got himself tangled in a _girl_, and her in him, like the Fates of greek mythology had grabbed the threads of their lives, pulled them in opposite directions like rubber bands, and then let go to watched them intertwine, until they were thoroughly splattered in each others existences, head to toe, birth to death even, in his own case at least.

Even before getting involved in it, if any variation of the word "before" is even meaningful in this concept, she looked at his scar left upon the world, and found it beautiful; There wasn't even a purely sensoric impression born from the mind of an impressionable, innocently unknowing girl; If she didn't understand its meaning then, she must have reached some inklings of comprehension at some point, perhaps after her own intimate contact with the very structure of his deeds, and she still went and described him as someone who "stops bad things happening at every minute of every day", an astonishingly short time after she very nearly smashed his face (after he basically just got it, too!) to express the extent of her disapproval; He was quite used to both kinds of reactions, and while he couldn't deny that the former made him feel somewhat flattered, it was the latter that he most appreciated, and this was, perhaps, why he found a certain unique comfort in people who were always eager to complain, or at least, not easily impressed (Examples, on a sliding scale from the former to the latter, would include Donna Noble, Peri Brown, Liz Shaw, Ian Chesterton or Sarah Jane Smith – not that this would have been the most defining trait or valuable feature of any of them), even when his own approach to the world was more one of trying to cultivate wonder.

Admiration based on an illusion was worthless at best and at worst, a dissapointment waiting to happen, so any delight he might take from praise or gratitude would always be tinged with a bitter aftertaste; Certainly, there were those in this world who thought of him as a champion of this world, someone who might one day grab them by their hands, reignite intrigue them with his mystery and save their world, or perhaps just give them the slight nudge they needed to realize that they could save it themselves, and ended up going very far in their belief that he was worth it and deserved to be paid back, but is is those very efforts , those assurances that they wanted him safe that put everything they said in doubt; Spectacular cases like Rose Tyler or River Song are only the most prominent ones, in part because he managed to... sort of fix things or do his best to make up for it, respectively, but most of the time, he can't do a thing.

After so many centuries, Davros' eerie rasp was still as fresh in his memory as ever, blending into a chorus -

"_...the Destroyer of Worlds!"_

"_...would anyone have died?"_

"_Is it that what you did to her, turned her into a soldier?"_

"_Do you realize how dangerous you make people to themselves?"_

"_...you can always tell with the aristocrats."_

He can't say he's ever been very skilled, or serious at convincing others that he was fickle, unattainable thing, that they should best beware, because honestly, who cold ever honestly go on living that way?

He's tried to stop once, to turn away anyone who would come with him, more than once; The second time, taking the additional precaution of staying in one place and time to avoid a repeat of the things that followed the first, but in the end, it was prophesized to fail by the most obvious of clues – His title had ultimately become was it was by means of being used, only coming to take on its full significance along the way, and mostly _after_ his departure and subsequent visit to Skaro, but there _was_ a reason he'd chosen it back then, when he was still relatively young, but tired of leaving the task of defining himself up to his surroundings and the nicknames his classmates had thought up in his stead. ("Theta Sigma" being by far the most prominent one, a terribly punny joke on the tendecy of his grades to be either barely tolerable or unexpectedly eceptional depending on his mood and level of investment)

He'd briefly considered "The Scientist", but that might've been a little too much to live up to hile still not denoting quite enough, and besides, too unpersonal for a title, so he went with his academic degree, at the time more indicative of his qualifications as a _physicist_, not a physician, but of course, having since spent so much time gavillating around with the explicit purpose to gather more knowledge, his present claims of omnidisciplinary expertise were quite justified, although physics – and engineering, for which knowledge of physics was always a huge advantage – had always remained his forte.

The title was certainly an admission that he understod himself as a scholar first, but certainly not the ivory tower version of common perception, but the reality of someone who is passionate and curious about the world and what makes it tick; He must protest the notions of "Measuring the marygolds" and similar concepts; There is nothing that knowing how exactly something works takes away from its value or the experience of experiencing it, but the wonder your average 5-year old seems to be born with needs to be both preserved undiminishedly, and tempered with stringent methodology so one can be sure of the results; Or that, at least, was his idea, the plan he started with, before everything got complicated, but at the bottom of it all, there was his point where he recognized curiosity as one of his fundamentally defining traits, later adding the corollary that a passionate appreciator of the wonder in this world should not like to see it wasted, a conclusion that the Master or the Rani had certainly never reached, but – there it was, that important detail of truth about him; In the end, he was, and always would be, a slave to his curiosity, for better or for worse; So all it took to rouse him from his pits of despair, all that was needed to shatter his conviction to resist his usual impulses time and time again was an unsolved mystery – a little scottish girl in a house that was far too big, an intriguing woman who should have been twice dead... how could he ever, possibly resist? How could he _not_ poke it with a stick, take them with him so he might observe them both in and out of their native environment

And perhaps, in some ways, the mystery _would_ just be an excuse to allow himself to accept the kindred spirits involved in both these incidents into his world, to make the unreasonable, but understandable choice to mitigate the loneliness of _right now _at the price of the pain that would undeniably follow, and he'd be unable to deny that he'd brought it upon himself, that the pain he was running towards was exactly what he deserved;

But whatever that was, 'what he deserved', be it pain, or respite, or the challenge he longed for, he would come to find that there was one woman out there who thought that, perhaps, it was a little bit of both, and seemed determined to make sure that he would receive every last bit of it;

And so it came to past that, after all his exploring and adventuring, he finally happens upon the impossible: a girl who could outdo _him_ with computers, who left _him_ marvelling at the beauty of her genius, who presented a mystery for _him_ to figure out, and ended up the one who'd grab his hand as a comfort, or simply to drag him along into adventure; A girl who could talk even faster than him, who would wind up saving _his_ native planet, or at least pointing him towards the way to do it, who wasn't even shy of his usual routine of tricking people into saving themselves so he could go and pull something potentially suicidal, someone who'd earn his admiration, who'd make _him_ want to pay it all back to her... the intangible woman in red who is all his curses and blessings at once;

She is wearing a red dress when he first sees her, and she is wearing another red dress when he takes her into his arms near the abyss that was meant to separate them from the heart of the TARDIS and back then, he was so relieved and overjoyed to find – or so he thought – that she wasn't a trick or a trap, that he might actually get to _keep_ her just as he was.

It isn't the unknown he should have been wary of, but the familiar, the simplest, most mudane of feelings, situations and ocurrences, the every day occurences during wich he has slowly allowed her to observe and assess him, and if secrets were mant to bring safety and protect from betrayal, all this might just have been the proof he needed to assure himself that he should never have let those walls melt down, that he was justified all along to keep her in the dark, but when that dark moment comes, there is – yes, rage, dissapointment and hurt, perhaps even regret, motly about other things, but to take it all back, to wish all this has never been, , he finds that he found way too much joy in their ways of being together, more than an one single moment could ever negate, even as he sees her without any mysticism or embelishment involved, filthy with the various fluids streaming down her face and the shame of her deeds.

* * *

><p>The memories of his first impression, revealed at last once that pretzel of a time stream finally untangled itself far enough for him to retain them, turned out to contain mostly admiration. Certainly, his drained state after centuries of endless warfare would have left him quite susceptible to hopeful mirages, but he thought there must have been an undeniable grain of truth in the person he saw, the person who sat across him in that gallery, offering cups of tea and words of comfort, that firm upholder of what was <em>right<em>, pointing him towards a way out when even he had given up all hope, as these brave, humans always did.

Maybe if he'd paid more attention, if he hadn't been so busy with other things, if he hadn't been so _weary, _he might already have spotted the eerie halo of faint recognition that followed every turn of her face, every sounding of her voice – In that moment alone, at last, she is salvation, and in some ways, she always remained that.

When he finally becomes aware of her existence in a way he gets to retain during their encounter at the Dalek Asylum, he is immediately as wary of her as he is fascinated, but when he first meets _her_, meets her properly a fashion recognizeable as a proper, old-school _beginning_, his zeal, his protectiveness, the sheer unadulterated joy he displays are all purest _gratitude_.

But by then, he's seen his boyhood hero turn out to be a madman that ruled a warped universe inside a black hole, seen both one of the few teachers who ever seemed to see any potential in him and the very founder of the society he was born into turn out to be more megalomaniac than in the worst of the stories, and even that is practically a handful of funny anecdotes compared to the horrors he's seen in the time war; If all of this didn't beat any capacity to believe in any sort of saints or impossible heroes straight out of him, the many years he spent trapped on Trenzalore sure _did_, all that time fighting, struggling, watching generations turn to dust before him, longing for the darkness that he was sure would release him from his strife, and those days and nights spent in silence, pondering the failings and mistakes of the life that led him here (Amelia! Just what had he _done_ to her when he left her to wait? Was it like this?) and bitterly understanding quite sufficiently that he never was, and never could be, anyone's dashing gentleman friend; And even though it was only the thought of _her_ that sustained him in all these years, his only beacon of light and the only reason he'd ever gotten off that planet in the first place (for now, that is), the wall left by the experience seems unsurmountable even when he gets back to her, and he's too old, too hard, too experienced, to miss these subtle details, how unsettingly efficient she is (and has been, in the past) in taken his role, how low blows are definitely on the menu ("Get back in your lonely little TARDIS!"), how she's definitely not telling neither him nor soldier boy the whole story, and how something seems off the very moment she steps into the console room that accursed day;

The hindsight poisons even the memories of the past, and he can now see the same power and efficiency in her dealings with the cybermen, or how even her counterpart in Victorian London (even before his involvement, as he almost thankfully notes) led two parallel lives, because she always, in any context, wants to experience it all, the respectable, perfectionist natural leader and the excitement of the nighttime, and, of course, an avid, pretentious buff of literature would label herself 'Miss Montague', a reference obvious enough to mock anyone who doesn't get it, an obvious alias, of course, rather like "John Smith".

He'd thought that, despite everythng, she had the wisdow to draw a line on how far she was willing to follow him and realized the follies and undesirabilities of his being, when she had the wisdom to remain behind on the earth during the incident with the forest, instead of begging him to save her loved ones at any price, or escaping by herself; He thought she'd quite understood that he couldn't fight physics, or the laws of the world, but aparently, he'd have no chance of ever predicting her, not in all ways, at least.

* * *

><p>"It was all a dream" is perhaps not the most poetic, or impactful ending for a story, but there's a reason he's given up on the heroes in such stories, because they only ever end up one way, and given the life he lives and the threats he often deals with, he cannot afford to be that wretched old magician who gets himself trapped in a cave by his own magic, betrayed by his distractingly pretty student after she had learned all his secrets, after he couldn't help himsel from showing off and taught her too little of his "magic" to do her any good, and too much to save himself; They'd make a pathetic sight, and every mirror he's come across since leaving Trenzalore seems rather intent on making sure that he will not forget his folly.<p>

But as he looks upon her, his _Nimue_, his _Vivien_, or Ninyave, depending which version of the myth one followed, his eyes turned cold and he could not help but observe in morbid curiosity, and while a great part of his emotional processes is occupied with being ripped wide open and reminding themselves that she's not even physically capable of knowing him as long as he's known her, and the he really ought to be more realistic with his expectations, but there was a certain callous little part of him that was almost impressed, or at least sufficiently dumbstruck to see that same... _will_ turned against him instead of the Daleks;

And yet, it is NOT the same, his Clara, the Clara he _thought_ he knew, would never have made such a stupid mistake, especially not after she'd gotten the recent incident with the 'invisibility watches' to pick up on, _certainly_ not after she'd recognized his making use of the propensity others might have toward that particular mistake as a staple of his modus operandi;

Had she been thinking clearly, had she not been completely inundated with chemicals and stress responses that made rational thought nigh impossible and otherwise just generally not herself, she would have realized that he usually made a point to make sure that none of the equipment he used could be turned against him, and thought of some other way to subdue him, likely quite sucessfully.

* * *

><p><em>"If it is no true, do not say it<em>

_If it is not right, do not do it."_

That quote, framed into your usual motivational poster layout together with a photograph showing a statue of her favorite Roman Emperor and the word "Integrity" printed in large, white letters, had served as her desktop background for many years; When she got rid of it, it was more for a simple change, and because motivational posters had become overused enough for her students to start snickering if they ever learned of this, but even if were still there, she would probably be unable to stand it by now; As a girl, she'd immediatel loved the straightforwardness of the quote, how it seemed to express the simple truth most poignantly, and in a way, she still thought so, still aknowledged that there was always the simple possibility to just _not_ do the wrong thing, but what had since changed was that this left her in a rather precarious position: Has she been naïve in thinking that others were lazy to do wrong, or would she just be lowly self-serving with any assertions that it was easy to be a saint in paradise?

Paradise was certainly not where she was going.

There were many words for a woman who's say "I love you" to one man while looking and thinking of another, and "liar" was one of the kinder ones.

Back when that picture still grazed her desktop, she'd shaken her head at the Doctor's suggestions that secrets could somehow make you safe, possibly, her influence was one of the things that made him throw that idea right out of the window, or at least backedal on it, she was quite positive that nowadays, his reactions to that situation might have been the exact opposite.

Back then, she did not see or perceive her own actions as "secretive", perhaps because she wanted to believe that what she showed to the world was not a perfectionist front, but simply her self that was just as she'd want it to be, and not quite as suceptible to fear; Turns out it took just a few shifts in situation to bring out the discrepancy, to make her quite aware that she might fall short, and be very terrified of that fact.

If it came to scary situations, the person that put her into them in the first place would hardly blame her for reactions that were only human, if doubting her decisions made her feel like an idiot, she could pin the blame right at whoever asked her to make it, but there was no simple way to excuse why she'd tell blatant, transparent lies to two of the most significant people in her life.

It was not that she somehow didn't care about them, or that's what she tried to tell herself; It certainly wasn't that any of them was somehow a... bad person, or wouldn't understand.

Danny Pink was as far from being an obediently marching little Dalek or a shoot-first-talk-later sort of dumb-muscle bully as the Doctor was from being a haughty aristocrat guy – he was positively anti-authoritarian, he was a _bookworm, _he... always blamed himself for everything... and as for Danny, she figured he was nice enough, she liked the wisdom he would somehow exibit, and his devotion to protect children – She had chosen her profession in part so she could give to others what had been taken from her when her mother died, and while she didn't know the whole story, she supposed that it must be something similar with him. She had no _reason_ to turn him away, being single and all that, but of course, neither of them knew that about each other, and they certainly didn't owe it to her or the world to get along with everyone in it; They'd just pressed the wrong buttons with each other, and she certainly wasn't demand that they get along, she had no right ask that of them, and no intetion; That's why she'd tried to keep things separate at first, so that none of them started to _worry_, or caused a _situation_ over this, so there wouldn't be any drama and nothing would have to change, and she would still be able to have her normal, successful life which included a job, a nice flat and a boyfriend, _and _spend her voyages as a capable, save space adventurer.

Regardless of wether she could, or should give any of these things up, a pair of questions that she had been trying hard to avoid, she had never quite seen why she would _have_ to, why she couldn't have both and continue doing worthwhile things in either capacity; why would they have to conflict, if neither man had any interest in the sphere the other existed in?

Except, of course, that life did not fit into neat little cathegories, life was a messy, blurry, unpredictable afair that refused to be fully controlled, and at the end of the day, things might just... collide, migle, and leave her with the demand for a well-deserved explanation.

And oh, she _tried_ to mend her wicked ways, to get it all sorted and in order and how it belonged, how it should be, how a mature person ought to handle and arrange things so they could neatly coexist without overlapped, but in hindsight, it seemed so obvious how it was all inevitably doomed, her rehearsed, painfully artificial speech teeming with suspiciously specific denial, her post-its to keep in mind each of her planned, eloquent paragraphs, ever the English teacher, ever the big words, ever _**fake**_, like a child's incincere promises delivered to placate nagging adults, "_Now_ I'll do it, _Now_ I'll behave, I promise, right tmorrow, I'm gonna start doing my homework and stop saying things that I shouldn't" - She had still thought that she'd get everything fixed if only she could apologize, and suddenly, she couldn't, and she was right back lost on their bank hollyday, or helplessly whimpering as her mother's body lost all of its warmth, after she'd used it to shield her young daughter from these rampaging shopdummy monsters.

As much as her guilty conscience insisted she ought to act like one, to the point that she might have done something very stupid if not for the insistent words of a dear person urging her to get her rationality working and be _certain_ before she acted on anything, in the end, she was – and would very much have declared this with pride under any other circumstances – not the type of hopeless romantic little girl that would throw away a deep, lasting connection beyond even a regular friendship for a simple love interest, which didn't make any of this any better, because that meant that it was all about _her_, and her refusal to accept that there were things in this life that were cruel and random, things that were out of her hands and couldn't be controlled, like the simple truth that she had fallen short of her standards, made a mistake with a person who deserved better, and now, she could never ever fix this again, and it was all her fault...

And in that instant, all thoughts of what was 'right' or what she 'should' do were washed away – She just wanted this universe to do what she wanted it to, and she was willing to use all means at her disposal to make it obey.

Part of her even coldly reasoned that, if there was the slightest chance that her sheme could have worked, it was totally worth it, and she might do it again.

Part of her snapped back in anger even when using the words that should have been her acceptance of her quite deserved punishment for basically going and ruining yet another of the good things in her life...

But just as she was almost halfway out the door of the TARDIS, just as she was resigned enough to begin thinking that she was almost thankful for his pityless honesty, he turned his head to her, and started to say something so beautiful she thought she might die, from the weakness in her knees, the shame burning in her chest, and the way the instant shattered and broke around them, as if from that very familiar hopeless, merciless frankness.

There she was, all this time, wondering why she put up with him, why she bothered making excuses for that person, if she even knew him, and all the time, she should have asking the same things of herself;

Oh, sure he was pissed. He was dissapointed. He was _wounded, _and didn't hesitate to make her understand that, but in the next breath, she sees him trying to build her back up, to give her streght, "Come on, get your brains back online, time to prove what we're made of!", willing to do what he could to give her things he could never have, with someone he didn't even _approve_ of, didn't even _like_.

It was the most startingly pure-hearted thing she had ever witnessed.

* * *

><p>In this brief moment of respite they might or might not have had, as apocalypse brews all around them, they find themselves on the strairs of the cathedral, waiting for something unspecified, perhaps the right wind, perhaps an opportunity.<p>

She's no longer sure if she believes in such a thing, if there is sense in hoping or wether it even matters; It's one thing when there's opponents to face and events to react to, something against which she can define herself through opposition and prop herself up through it; In the silence of this moment, there is only vagueness, only uncertain futures she can't guess at when she's not even certain of the present, of whom she just spoke to, and what it even means.

She sits there, a grown woman in black stockings and proper clothes, and all she can to is pull her legs to her body and hug her knees, when she has long since forgotten to make attempts at not weeping; She can only imagine how filthy she must look, in ways way beyond 'Wide face and a funny nose', all red and puffy and swollen, tears and snot sticking to her face, and of course, there's the moral repugnancy.

If there was ever any chance that her pretense at being mature and righteous was ever fooling anyone at all, the impressions should be so far damaged that it's no use to ever bother, and she honestly feels it might be easiest if she could just _give up, _but there's still this whole situation, there is this tall, pale-faced man whom she has already thoroughly dissapointed and should have seen her true self quite clearly, but since he's somehow still there, some insidious piece of pride still fuels the usual reflexes that would otherwise quickly make sure that she isn't seen when she's making such a hot, sticky, salty mess everywhere.

She wants to do something about it, stop herself from looking like a lost little girl in front of her, but her limbs won't obey and the state of her face just gets worse, and while she might treacherously lower her face hoping that her hair will cover the mess on the front, but all hypothetic progress is undone by how her sobs just get louder.

"I'm not even sure... if I'm really crying because of _him_, or just because of this mess I made..."

And of course, his unreadable gaze stays where it is, and no false reassurance comes forth.

"I know- I know it _should _be him. It should be him. And I've- Even you-"

He's sitting there upright, arms rested on his knees, his frame sharply defined by the outline of his dark, red-lined jacket, and she feels she doesn't even want to know what she might find in his eyes right now, although she's sure that their glance is pinned somewhere between the mess that is her hair and the cloth covering her back. She knows that apologies will be useless if she doesn't mean them, and she can't even tell if she means them, so she can't even risk it, not when she's not even sure if anything about her own idea of herself was correct at all, even in the slightest bits.

All she has to cling to is the hope that, perhaps, she needn't fear the words as much if they come from her own mouth, if she can... anticipate them, they won't just hit her unprepared.

"...When this is over, you're going to boot me out, aren't you? You won't... can't ever take me with you again..."

His answer is in no way definite and opens with a serious, heavy sigh. "You do understand... that I can't let anyone have access to the TARDIS or certain delicate knowledge if I cannot trust them."

"So I'm... unsuitable?" she tries to summon up some 'fight' at this, forces herself to look up at him even with her visage in its full slippery, contorted glory. "Not a fit? Not good enough?"

"...I didn't say that."

Her movements and expressions become wild and vivid at that, although she is as much raging for her own benefit as she simply wants something clarified. "Don't. Just don't! Don't give me that!"

That does seem to surprise him, but judging by his serious look, he's expecting something quite different than what is about to come, and this doesn't change as she braces herself with numerous sobs, wanting this bit to get out without a misunderstanding.

"...Listen, just so we understand ach other... It's one thing if you're... pissed at me because of what I just did, I'd have no objections to give you there, if you said I wasn't trustworthy, or just didn't want to see my face again, there's nothing I can do to argue with _that_. But don't you go and brandish the martyr complex, and tell me that you're gonna do this for my own good. Don't you act like you're my bloody father or something, or worse than that. If we part ways tomorrow, I don't want you to go and act like everything that goes bad _ever_ if your fault, like you always do. You're really overstating your influence there, if you think all I do, even all I do wrong, everything any people around you ever do wrong, revolves around _you. _I'm not your... weapon, or your grunt, or someone you 'corrupted'. I screwed up. I really did, but that was me.

I did what I did, all the things I did, for many reasons of my own, and I can't speak for everyone who ever gor hurt in your vincinity, but I' sure they had their reasons for what they did, too, things they believed in, things they wanted to protect, not all of which have to agree with _you. _If you... if you honestly think that, y-you're doing them a greater disservice than yourself! My mistakes are _mine, _okay? _I _screwed up."

"Sounds almost like you're proud of them." he comments sadonically, and something about it really gets her seething, but, mostly for lack of any right to say anything, she finds that anger mostly evaporating as she struggles to continue her idea somehow, not even finding the words to really contradict him or find a real follow up to his words, not even the most minimal, 'Of course I don't'. "Just... don't blame herself, okay?" and the sincerity, the wish to leave at least something in order, surely tears at her. "And when you remember me, don't think of me as some... silly earthling that you didn't handle correctly, or some person that _you_ screwed up. Think of me as... this friend you had, or someone with the same hobby as you, who appreciated that nice vehicle you used to have access to because of where you happened to get born. We found that we... had a lot of thinks in comon, and then, I screwed up. Alright?"

Obviously, he shakes his head, but she defensively interrupts hm before he can get any father than "Clara, Clara...".

"Whatever happened to... 'Some decisions are too important not to make on your own'? Don't you _dare_ decide this for me!"

"So you're sure then?" He asks, brusquely, straightforwardly. "You think this is definitely a good idea, to keep going? You _can_ handle it? Nothing like this will ever happen again? You understand that?"

And as if on cue, she falls back into herself, onto her knees, sobbing.

Sure she understands, but she understood before she even did it, and did it regardless. If the Understanding were the problem, she would at least have some way to fix it, but like this, she couldn't guarantee anything. She had only just lost her boyfriend an co-worker, and to have yet another important person drop out of her life right now was the last thing she needed; She imagine that maybe, one trip would even cheer her up a bit, but when she thought of one trip becoming many, and the further direction that might lead her into, she was much less certain. She was supposed to do the wise thing, but was what that even, could leaving all this behind in this mess of a state be called wise, when she'd still be the same when she'd be alone here, without him, and come to regret it as a hasty choice that didn't adress the real problem?

By now, she knew that asking for trips without the ocassional dangerous event was neither a realistic, or even fair thing to ask of him.

She didn't want to be alone; She didn't want even more things to change either way, and she didn't have the slightest idea what to do.

"I- I was going to be mature and reasonable..." she subben, obviously having given up all hope of being, or even appearing as any of these things. "If... if Danny were here, he'd want me to do the _mature_ thing-" and now, she could no longer contain herself. The floodgates opened, and she became a most undignified sight to behold, the level-headed, decisive teacher having completely given way to inelegant blubbering. "It was all because of me, if I hadn't lied... if I hadn't had to explain in the first place-"

And amids it all, in the most unexpected moment, there was a hand on her shoulder, attached to an arm that was awkwardly held in a position where there was as little contact as possible, but still placed there with deiberate precision.

"It's alright, I get it, believe me, I do. Loss does things to the mind."

And he really does get it. He's been there, he's lost people, dear people of various kinds; He has no right to claim any sort of high ground here, he hasn't had any for a long time, and he wished, he really hoped that perhaps, he could keep her from these feelings of loss, of guilt that he knows is probably the sort that will never go away, but what matters is that she's feeling all this now and that he understands it very well;

And that might just be the only silver lining to this horrible situation they've found themselves in, that the very thing that would usually be this largest, unsurmountable barrier between him and the humans around him could be the very thing that allows him to understand now, that allows him to be there for her now.

She had put up with _him_, all the times he was being irrational or simply confused, all the mistakes he had made, and she was still here.

She had always been there, all this time, when he didn't know what it was living for, whenever he hadn't been sure what to do, and who he even was... and he had not forgotten. He had _not_ failed to value that.

What made her think he wouldn't pay her back, show _her_ another way when she couldn't find one, lead _her_ back onto the path, now that it was finally his turn?

Right now, in the state she's in, she might be forgiven for thinking that he's helping her out of nowhere, but he knew he was not, and she would too, soon enough; He is here right now because he has waded through that same Darkness, because he's chosen his undoing as she's chosen hers.

"...doing all of this for me... after all I did... You must think that I'm a horrible person..."

"I think that it is very obvious that you don't want to be, and as someone once told me... that is probably the point."

And she thinks, just briefly, from the way she shifts his fingers on her shoulder, the slight melancholy tine in his otherwise matter-of-factly voice, and the way looks at her with those eyes of his, somewhat... softly, delayed in a way that makes him look very old, and very deep in thought, that he might very well actually grab her, press her against his chest and allow her to let her tears flow freely.

Obviously, he doesn't do that; He does something better.

Rising to his feet, he extends a single arm and offers his hand.

"Come. We have work to do."

* * *

><p>"If I love you, you best beware.<p>

For I might just be exactly what you deserve."


	4. United Again (Twin Hearts)

**Inspired by/ spoilers for the Children-in-Need trailer for the upcomming Christmas special. Oh Jenna, you Jenius. **

She doesn't even get a chance to think; The sound is just there and an instant later, so is the familiar creaking of the door, and she turns in a timeless daze, through the numbing viscousness of the nighttime air.

The blue box is framed in half-light and so she wonders if she dreams, if her brains aren't just erroneously computing those garish bits of illumination into familiar patterns and shapes; She is already so surrounded by surreality that she doesn't even pay mind to the slowing down of time, or the interplay of the interstitial darkness with the dim orange glowering from within.

She just knows that there is the long likeness of a man framed between the lights both warm and cold, a mosaic of shadow and pallor demanding to be processed.

In the twillight of their meeting place, he barely even resembles a human, not even by the distorted sharp outline of his angular form; His colorless eyes reflect the light in an eerie gleam and the shadows find plenty of burrows and crannies in the lines and contortions of his wild face; His unusually ordinary clothing takes away much of the refinement from his appearance and accentuates the scruffy bits, and cast in the sharp contrasts by the light from their silvery sky-egg, he looks so very pale and gaunt, more so than she remembers, and the lines on his face have less in common with the wrinkles of your friendly neighborhood pensioner than the crumpled bark on a venerable oak tree or the ancient crevices of a mountainrange;

And yet, all she perceives are merely the letters, that once put together, come to spell out what is simply the shape of a dear person dolefully missed, a kindred mind and a soul she thought she might never touch again.

She doesn't recall how her hand got on his arm, but she urgently needs to make it do the talking because her face is utterly frozen in place and the comfirmation of his cool, reacting flesh and blood beneath her palm seems more likely to exascerbate it than to offer mitigation; But she had to know, is still desperate for knowledge of whether he isn't just another part of this crazy flurry of color, snowflakes and bad jokes, so she won't go squandering any of those emotions on an inevitable disapointment.

Then of course, he tells her exactly what she needs to hear, because _of course he does, _seriously and gruffly and in the middle of the business he's conducting, but she thinks he's taking care to phrase his words not like an order, but a request between friends, because wasn't this the conclusion last time, that friends are better than armies? And all the memories rush back with the realization that they're staring at each other like that time when he first took this form; Back then, they had recoiled in confusion, yet remained bound by the crass gawking of confused fascination, but this time, their motions seem to draw them toward each other, with him leaning in more than his demonstrative explaining would necessitate, or that succint slipping of her hand further down his arm as she follows, like the many things she now wants to say or do, like she was afraid he might just dissapear back into the night if she ever let go.

But even she doesn't think that an illusion could renew the memory of his voice, his most particular way of saying her name, the rough clarity of the vowels and the twirl in the 'r' and the frankness of understated devotion when he would say it over and over again, repeated like one of those incoherent scribbles on his blackboards: Clara, my Clara, claraclaraclara.

Like ever before, his voice was enough, the promise that made her press on despite her emotions, simple instructions and an urgent tone that told her all she needed to know, and in that instant, a part of her that had been dreaming for a long time rises to the surface like a mermaid jumping out into the air with a boastful splash, and in an instant, she understands, she nods, connects, trusts and saves the feelings for later, and without a moment's hesitation, they are an unit again, _united again_ amongst their midwinter snow.

From the moment she starts moving until the TARDIS doors snap shut behind her, his eyes, face and body remain turned towards her alone.

Working to pump warmth into the peripheral edges of his form, his twin hearts beat strong, in this second chance at life that is a gift from _her_.

**As someone on tumblr said, this trailer thing was far more intense than it had any right of being; Maybe it's just me being preemptively charged with feels, but in any case, I was compelled to scribble down my impressions. Oh Twelvie. Oh Clara... How do you make everything so awesome? Oh, and excuse the lame pun above. **


	5. Patterns

**Patterns**

**The result of some rewatching the first few s8 episodes; Just something I noticed. I find they have immense rewatch value, especially if you spent the first few episodes just... not yet quite acclimatized to our protagonist.**

It does occurr too often to be a mere incidental coincidence, and is far too specific a situation for the diffuse label of being a 'tendency', but they were not concious enough of its ocassional repetition for it to be one of these phrases they would repeat to each other to tug at very particular shared meanings, associations and memories of previous encounters, like a 'motif' or perhaps a sort of insider-metaphor.

Nonetheless, this type of exchange came up often enough to constitute at least a recurring pattern.

It would start with any situation like this, the usual lottery pick between a spaceship, a high building or an elaborate underground base, or whatever else might contain a sufficient amount of steely corridors for them to run through, them, and this week's designated band of potential would-be survivors, and along the way, they would inevitably stumble about sights that were definitely not pretty – this time, she was the first to spot it, by a sound that she might have described with a more appropiately dark metaphor if she had been aware of its true nature when she first perceived it and associated it with misplaced bits of gooey strawbery jam dropping down on a table;

The source was, at least, just about the same color and consistency, but the field of associations and reactions it evoked would be very much the opposite, so long as one actually liked strawberry jam and thus connected it to the relative safety of a cozy kitchen and an appetitizing sight, which the thing that was sticking to the ceiling of the corridor and dripping down in chunky bits right now was very much _not_; The outward, peripheral parts of it were still identifiable as what little remained of the limbs and head of an aspiring young man they had encountered a few hours ago, back when this whole situation still looked like it might turn out to be a pleasant road trip, and those dreams and plans he had described to them still held a chance of coming true.

She recalled adressing him with words of encouragements earlier, and she _thought _that the Doctor had tried the same, although some of his remarks ended up being more on the counterproductive side, leaving her with the task of shutting him up, just one of the _many_ tasks she seemed to have gotten stuck with lately – In the light of the grotesque spectacle before them, the memory lost all of its humorous tinges forever.

And there was a time where Clara would have screamed at this sight, or at least frozen up and entered a futile battle to banish the uneasy chill and discomfort that would invariably take up residence in her bones, (and unknowingly prompt a certain bow tie wearing wanderer to curse himself over his dubious justifications for bringing her into these situations in the first place) but in the wildernesses of this world, to live was to adapt, and while there would never be a day on which the thought of her own mortality would leave her completely unfazed, Clara Oswald had always been very, very good at adapting.

The idea that necessity was the mother of all ingenuity might be a comforting idea cooked up to pretend that hellholes are opportunities, but it can very much be an effective fertilizer, and what her evironment demanded right now was a further sharpening of her preexistent alertness, a grim narrowing of her eyes and a strategic tensing in certain parts of her face and limbs.

At first, nobody else seemed to have taken note of the gruesome scene, but the Doctor almost immediately noted the shift in her bearings and sucessfully utilized it to pinpoint its aim, the exact spot from which the twitch in her arms was meant to back away from, and when he turned to look, so did everyone else, and the screaming was upon them at long last, shrieks and gasps all around them, the loudest of all courtesy of the unfortunate barchelor's younger sister.

Nonetheless, the first person Clara finds herself turning towards once her body slides out of its initial frozen stupor is the one single man who remains the silent eye among the brewing storm of clamor and turmoil, a tall frame whose narrow, sharp face seems merely concentrated, its upper portions most certainly narrowed in appropiate seriousness, brows furrowed like heavy rainclouds nearing the moment of an electric discharge, but all in all, he probably appeared to be the calmest person in the room at the time she cautiously screened his face and posture for any discernable hints, and, not even certain of what she should have been looking for or what 'okay' even looked like on this particular set of hardware, asked, **"Are you okay?"**

And if he even perceived her, not just her voice but the entire complex construct of expression, body language and tone of voice that she's aiming in his direction, it certainly doesn't show as he simply walks past her, his attention focussed at the mystery in front of them at the expense of anything else, the very way of moving about making her wonder how he could manage to appear this inacessible with a basically human-shaped form, something about the way he had his head and limbs perched forward, that was too dominant to be labelled 'tentative', but certainly probing.

He squats down under the mess on the ceiling all while he peers up at the spectacle itself like a predatory animal in waiting, like the motions aren't even connected to each other, just carefully ordained to fulfill their purposes by a faraway pupeteer, and even she can't fathom why he is doing this at all until she notices him using two fingers to sweep up some of the stinking red goop from the floor and hold it in front of his face to give it a good look without having to turn his neck, and when both their conciousnesses are grazed by the beginnings of voices protesting, he gestures with his other arm and gruffly barks out a "Shut up!" -

And Clara is left with far too many things to consider at all and no clue as to what to feel and when, when this spike of indignation and outrage at his callousness towards a person who just lost her brother demands her time, but said time is already split and stretched out between far too many tasks that are demanding her attention all at once, not just because he seems to have pushed the handling of the demoralized crowd off to her once again, when some parts of that very mind are still racing and processing the clues and traces of whatever might still be hiding in the darkness of these corridors as quickly as her own fear of a quick, unannounced death would let them move, but because turning to adress them involved looked away from _him_, and these days, she never knows what he might be _doing_ if she let him out of her sight.

She never knew whether to be worried or unsettled or pissed-off, which in itself was enough to leave her mostly _frustrated_ before any of the other components featured into the mix, but the questioning little voices of all she wanted to be wouldn't let her be frustrated in peace for too long before they started questioning her in mocking tones – Didn't he _always_ use to whirr about the room with even _more_ frantic energy, uncontrollably touching things, pressing buttons and displaying little understanding of boundaries, or was that different because she could – or at least _thought_ she could – _rely _on him buzzing about and prepare for that, was it not quite so hard to expect what to expect before he'd taken to this way of just... standing in a room and letting himself absorb it with those large, unfathomable eyes, never letting her know when he might stir and do something incredibly unlikely that would require quick-witted participation on her part – with the way he was inspecting that tidbit of the man's remains, she was almost worried she might have to sprint forward to keep him from _licking_ it, but it seemed that at the very least, centuries of experience with performing impromtu taste-tests on random substances, whether they happened to contain dead people or not, was seldom met with pleasant results, and merely contented himself with loudly sniffing at today's designated sample, which, given that it already looked barely tolerable to her as someone who dealt with him on a regular basis and knew that much of is inexplicable behavior did, ocassionally, tend to yield useful results, probably did little to calm down the rest of their small group, least of all the poor fellow's rather apalled sister, who watched in stunned disbelief as he mumbled some remarks on the consistency of the goop, turned around to face them and casually pulled out a hankerchief to sanitize his fingers with, reacting little to the woman's high, wordless gasp and its role a manifestation of just how little she could believe what was taking place before her eyes – Clara could not exactly blame her;

As much as she wished for this situation to end or proceed, if he were to ask her, she would not have denied that he brought the next thing that happened on himself, that he should have expected the recently bereaved lady to block his path as he gestured for them to leave, and proceed to stare at him accusingly with her tear-filled eyes; Everyone else in their small band was looking at the girl with heavy, affected faces.

"That. Was my brother!"

"I am aware of that, yes."

"You... you said not to go after him... you said he woud be fine! I was gonna go after him, and you told _me_-"

"-what was most likely to keep you from wandering off. If we spilt up, whatever did this would just pick us off one by one." he stated, in a businesslike tone, before moving to step right past the distraught woman. It was, perhaps, telling that she did not have the heart to go after him or make him look at her in any other fashion, like, say, grabbing his arm, but simply turned in his direction, too daunted by his scowl and the harshness of his voice to pose any serious resistance, her voice small and broken: "But... what about him..."

At that, he sighed in exasperation, even though he did turn to face her. "This laboratory has at least 74 floors, and if we spend our time scouring it for people whose whereabouts and location we have no idea about, we will never get to the surface alive, and what ever escaped from down here will be let loose on the city above; For all we know, your brother has already been dead since before we even noticed that anything had gone wrong, and there was nothing we could do to begin with."

The woman's weepy protests did gain a little in intensity, if not much in streght. "My brother, my kind big brother that has looked after me all my life... – has been _eviscerated_–"

"No.", he interrupted, with little regards or tact. When the victim's sister looked up, partially moving out of her closed-off, half-curled up posture in both confusion and schock at the further callousness she thought to see manifested in his brazen tone, he merely continued as if he were lecturing her: "He was _not_ eviscerated. Hasn't anyone here been paying the least bit of attention?" He gestured toward the young man's squashed remains on the ceiling with something that resembled casual annoyance. "Do you see any innards, or bones there? There's not even blood, just... goop, and the pattern it's splattered in, like he exploded from the inside out. He wasn't physically attacked, he was _liquified, _the whole components of the body, transfigurated and rearranged! So think about it. Question: Why carry out such a complicated process and make such a flashy mess, when you could just use a raygun or something, no shortage of those around here. Answer: Because whatever did this has an ability that can be used in an easy, quick and remote way that also happens to do this. Why would it have such an ability? Anwer: Perhaps, because it needs to. Because maybe that's how it... _harvests_ something, something that will make it stronger with every victim that it kills. Therefore, I'd really appreciate it if none of you went waltzing straight into its arms, if you can help it!"

That shut her up.

She remained standing there, silently sobbing, as everyone else reluctantly began to move on ahead, unsure as they might be given the sight of her – and as they were beginning to pass her by, Clara took a deep breath, straightened herself up and summoned up her best impression of a calm, confident face, well-practiced as it was due to her line of work. At least this girl was someone she could more or less read, although few of the people in this corridor would have believed just how inwardly relieved she felt when it turned out that she had correctly anticipated that the younger woman, given her body language, would be receptive to a supportive hand being placed on her back as comforting gesture, and still seemed sufficiently open to, or perhaps even silently craving words of comfort, no matter which source they would be coming from; If she wasn't, she wouldn't have kept talking like that when she realized that the tall, unreadable man ahead of them wasn't going to provide any.

"...Listen... I know that this must be horrible for you. I know it must be hard. We spoke to your brother earlier at the presentation, we... heard about the dreams he had..." she began, cautiously weighing her words and their tone to match and uit what she could gauge from the other woman's face. "He spoke about you, too. I could tell that you two were very close, so... I'm certain that he would have wanted to you to be safe, to... get out of this place now."

"Then how? How? If you and this... this _man_ really met him, then how can he be so... How can he-"

That was most certainly _not_ the direction she'd hoped to steer this conversations toward – She didn't know if he conciously expected her to be like, his personal PR department, but between how he acted, and how she was, the things that were important to her and the things she couldn't ignore, she would probably wind up in that role one way or another, and that, too, frustrated her, because if she was going to wind up having to be his face to the world and explain him to people, it would at least help if she had the slightest clue of what he wanted her to communicate, or what he was even thinking – If she was to be honest, Clara had to admit that she could not speak with confidence when it came to any of this, but for the sake of the person beside her, she _had_ to: "He is... He's just acting that way because he is every bit as stressed out as anyone else here. He's trying to focus on finding a way to get us all out of here, those of us he _can_ get to in time, including you. You have to keep going... Believe me, he's doing the best he can."

"So you say."

And she wished she could say that it was the certain truth, and while it isn't, she really does want to believe, perhaps self-servingly, that it is a bit more than a lie anyways, something vaguely soaring above a mere guess, perhaps something more elusive than certainty, yet imbued with more meaning than a mere hunch, like a hope, a prayer, or a promise, that whatever else was floating around in the thick skull of the man who was walking before her, his dark clothing melting into the darkness, she would probably – hopefully – be in there somewhere, somehow.

(There were – quite a lot of things, storms and flurries of thoughts, cogwheels slowly clicking away at the problem at hand, sorting through various half-thawed threads of associations, foggy recollections of similar situations, tidbits of music that wouldn't shut up and half-finished treatises that had been in the making for years untold, a chaotic mess of various going ons with a few surprisingly focussed components and some parts where it was always raining;

And somewhere in the vastness, there was yet another surreally long blackboard, where yet another tally mark had been added to a very, very long line of these; In here, it was a truly unspectacular, thoroughly granted thing that her concern and support would be duly noted –

Of course she knew, she usually knew, more than she thought she knew, maybe not 'always', as she had once announced with that mysterious smile on her lips, but _most_ of the time, even when he couldn't afford to let it show, even when he was too lost to find it for himself –

And should her own dark days ever come, she might just come to find that he had not forgotten. )


	6. Appearances

He might seem imposing, wild and inaccessible at first, but if you give him time, he's a raw diamond.

He cleans up nicely, for once; He can look so _beautiful_ whenever he actually bothers to run a comb through his hair. He is one of these people who, through posture or body language or unflattering hairstyles, somehow manage to squander much of their natural appeal, or perhaps more like those girls who could look like a dozen distinct people just by going for a different shade of lipstick – there were those times, when he would stand up straight at his full height and let her get a good look at the broad sharpness of his frame, when their surroundings were crazy enough for that red lining to work as the simple, yet effective optical accentuation it was probably intended as, instead of something slightly-over-the-top that you'd expect to see on a stage performer, when he took the situation serious enough to speak with an imposing, velvety gravitas that immediately took over the entire room and fixed all glances onto himself;

She had surely noticed, and it wasn't as if she hadn't seen others notice it, too, Marian, Saibra, anyone who cared to look past the silly veil of first impressions; There was no _lack_ of things to notice – Those elegant hands, his sleek palms combined with fingers that were long, but even in breadth, powerful instead of spindly, and usually adorned with one or several gem rings that sparkled in the artificial lights of spaceships and underground complexes; His sleek waist and hips outlined by the dark fabric of his close-fitting pants when he placed his hands in his pockets, radiating practiced ease and an understated challenge;

There were his long, sinewy limbs that took up all the space wherever he chose to spread himself out, the sort of narrow, aquiline nose one would associate with a man of leadership, the edgy, yet refined construction of bones that made up his forehead, and what she was hesitant to refer to as "high aristocratic cheekbones", given that would probably compare that term to a large, festering pimple in terms of favorability, although it might have softened the blow if he let her get to the point in the description where she'd state that the uneven lines beneath probably balanced that out, as did the presence of his oddly rectangular lips as a little, distinctive trait that imbued his already striking visage with additional charisma.

Then, there's the voice that spills forth from those lips, that deep, gravelly wonder, with that very characteristic, gruff, dry tinge added by his accent, which, in an otherwise quiet room, with her disorderly emotions in an appropiately receptive state, was already quite enough by itself to get her uncomfortably bothered by the feeling of warm tingles in her center.

And, last but not least: The largest, most expressive eyes she could have conceived in her thoughts, sparkling with the sweetest of sadness, gray like treacherous, overcast april skies, of the sort that, depending on the lighting, could appear to contain the palest flicker of color, every bit as hard to place as he could be_, _and every bit as beautiful, although he didn't know it_… _but _of course_, that idiot was so hung up on those blasted eyebrows that he never noticed what was right beaneath them, and she was afraid that it might be slightly her fault, too.

For her most precious, and at the same time, the most bittersweet thing about this form of his, the meaning that it always holds, the truth it incessantly reminds her of, is that he took it _because of her_, not to have it please or charm her, or anyone else, not even primarily because she contributed to his survival, because she was there to be the first thing he perceived before even the realization of existence, but that it had been a sign of his trust in her, his belief that, after all she had seen of his secrets, she could handle him just as he was, and guide him through his time of weakness –

And then, she had gone and squandered it all on a simple misunderstanding, because she didn't want to be the one who got it wrong, because she was uncertain and confused –

It was never a matter of what he looked like; She had seen him worn down from the Time War, witnessed his wasted form on Trenzalore, and held him all the same; It was her own inability to predict every thing he was going to do and know every single thought in his head that she couldn't forgive, and when she took it out on him, there was certainly no shortage of passive-agressiveness on his part, but ultimately, he took all the blame onto himself and assumed that it was all his mistake, thinking himself a ridiculous, deluded old man misjudging his place, expecting too much, giving up the person he had loved even after being trapped without her for enough time for empires to rise and fall, the person he had once taken into his arms like they had never parted, because he had never gotten to hear any of her sheer outrage at the mere _suggestion_ that their connection had never gone beyond a shallow, superficial infatuation with his exterior.

When the other girls her age had plastered their rooms with the images of fresh-faced boyband-singers, she had hidden away with her books and only let herself be moved to strong feelings of awe by the beauty of the written word, the thought of ideas and philosophies; When others were aimlessly dreaming their days away, she had known from the beginning what she wanted to do and dedicated herself to her studies, while they were partying their nights away, she stayed to look after two children who shared her life's pain.

She never had the slightest interest in pretty young men, but she had loved him so much that she still loved him even when he looked like one of these;

It wasn't merely that she had looked past some surface that wasn't quite her type; Rather, she had grown to love that wide nose and that square, oversized chin at the same time as she had grown her affection for the soul that lived within, somewhere behind the lies and the rehearsed glittering of his Aura; She loved him because he was the man who had peeled off her masks before she even knew they were there; She loved that ridiculous dark quiff and that dorky nasal voice because they were _him, _and she had a place in her heart that would always be set aside for those lively cholorophyll greens, his protracted, heavily-amended metaphors and the sheer sight of him, hanging in a swing-like construction like a strange fruit in a rainforest of cables and wires, with everything about him covered in engine grease, from his shoes, to his dark waistcoat, the once shiny golden chain leading to his watch, his silly bowtie, those dark-rimmed glasses and that radiant, open smile that was ever inviting –

Regardless, she would have to extremely resent any notion that she might not be able to do the same with this new set of outward decorations that, just for the record, was much closer to her personal preferences for what little such superficial things even mattered to her –

But never were those little cracks and discrepancies between what she aspired to be, and what she actually succeeded at being more apparent than in the belated realization that she had brought this upon herself, because of her pathological need to have everything take place on her own terms, her inability to accept the spontaneous and accept the unforseen, because she wanted to have her cake and eat it, too, present him to her family as she had done in all those only slightly truncated stories she told him were unrelated, made-up pretense without having to breach that boundary once and for all, that she had acted as if their time together could be trusted to go on forever and failed to make use of the offer contained in that brief misunderstanding – Back then, when he mistakenly thought she was asking him to be hers, he just agreed without thinking, like it was just the long overdue stating of the obvious, and, judging by his incoherent mumblings about manuals, even seemed ready to get on with the lovemaking right then and there, and she'd just dismissed it, not expecting that they might be separated, or that he might feel compelled to act and clarify the situation himself before she got around to it –

And now, he still takes her out into the nights, allows her to wrap herself in the most luscious finery from both their wardrobes, to sparkle alongside him in the city lights.

He leads her, with an elegant, gentlemanly taking of her hand, into restaurants and festivities and before sights that have nothing to envy from these, for he understands that both their exquisite appetites prefer their dinner with an extra serving of thrills, and even she cannot have remained unaware of this for much longer –

And if she had not known better, she might have been tempted to suspect that just maybe, just sometimes, in certain ways if never in the obvious ones, he silently indulged in seeing her at her most radiant, glittering at the world with her bracelets and rings, adorning him with the envy of men and women alike with her actions and words, and ever so deliberately dosed, if not necessarily sparingly, allowing him the sight of her awed face, when he outdit himself in the orchestrasting of her entertainment, advertizing the sights in a way that almost allowed her to pretend that he was her showy, exuberant weekend-lover presenting her an extravagant idea for a date or little romantic vacation, (which was, incidentally, just what he sometimes called when he was out of her earshot, where his foolishness could do no harm, and not even wistfully, but brimming with life - "Beat _that_ for a date!") or when he faced down the shadows as her champion, always the one to speak the magic words or defy the nameless horrors, and she was struck, for the tiniest of moments, by how he looked sort of heroic and knightly, no matter how quickly the obnoxiousness of his incredibly lame puns or the sight of his ridiculous, improvised weapons moved to dissipate that impression.

And somewhere along the way, they would walk through the unsuspecting masses with their arms linked, and some attentive soul would pick up on what they themselves had been so quick to deny from the very beginning, and perhaps, suspect that he was some lucky, wealthy bastard taking his pretty young bonnie out for a walk, and they would just let them stare and inwardly smirk to themselves, knowing that they were so much more than that, and in no need of such a silly, superficial thing when they had this rare connection they found with each other, best friends, kindred spirits, the most efficient pair of comerades and mutual muses, each other's earth and sky, heaven and hell and nothing in between –

But _in addition_ to that, and in _no_ kind of mutual exclusion, existed the fact that they both really welcomed the flattery, but the motions of that delight were cursed to take place under wraps, for each closed off from the other, and rarely ever without a twinge of guilt.

In cool nighttime air, the heat inside them slowly simmers.


	7. Residues

Clara Oswald is well aware of the phenomenon commonly known as pangs of jealousy.

They're not a far-fetched possibility around this man she tends to be around of.

She obviously knew of Professor Song and his other marriages, she kept tabs on his offhanded mentions and anecdotes to puzzle together images of everything from rather random unscheduled lip-collisions, to brief love affairs that were often tragically cut short or constrained by impossible circumstances, to specific names he'd sometimes mention, the "Sarah"s, "Peri"s and "Romana"s he'd speak of with fond respect or the "Jo", "Charley" and "Rose" that would sometimes tinge his voice and face with varying degrees of yearning wistfulness.

It didn't take much imagination to speculate that some of them might have reacted with a bit of jealousy, it was only human, after all. Others perhaps, were themselves people that did not like to be tied down in any way and thus, didn't expect it of him, either.

Where did Clara fall on that scale? Well, she was 'human' as well, but she was supposed to be a mature person. She never expected to have been the first one to have traveled with him, and understood that there had been a long before, and that there would be a long after; She hoped so, at least, given that the alternatives would be outliving him or leaving him to a miserable future. There was also that little factoid that she wasn't officially supposed to be anything of his, as flimsy as the denial had once gotten in places and, at times, still got, and even if she was, she could understand that there was obviously a time before he'd met (or become aware) her, (even if they could make it their "now" rather easily thanks to their nifty time machine), and back then, he'd be quite free to do things like marry the (then) queen of England (and get snogged senseless by her), she'd even be his maid of honor and throw some glitter for the occasion! ...but a point would come at which her smile would crack, her emotions would force their way past her rational mind and she'd wind up rolling her eyes... or skip to the eyes-rolling right away if he situation was surreal enough which, with him, it often was.

To be frank, she would not pretend that she, in any way, enjoyed to see him kiss other people, or even having to hear that he had a granddaughter, and thus, at some point, spawned at last two generations of offspring with someone who wasn't her.

She could not guarantee that what was true in quiet moments would hold true in the heat of a moment, but when she was at her desk doing work or contemplating the day sitting on her bed, when she could think things through completely and , she could, at least on an abstract, intellectual level, say that she was _fine _with Professor Song, Elizabeth, Tasha. If they were parts of his story, if they had helped him on his long path and kept him in one piece so he could even _get_ to her, if they were part of the reason he was how he was, then she was _grateful _towards this Rose, Charley or Romana, even the Master, as much as Clara despised that evil creature in the end.

And him?

Well, it was not in any way correct to call him a jealous person. He wasn't the type to resent others for their happiness, or dismiss and devalue something because it didn't match his personal taste, wasn't suited to him, or simply something he couldn't have; (although it could be hard to tell nowadays... and actually, before, too, with the way he'd sometimes belittle everything in sight when he was sufficiently bored or frustrated) If someone he cared about was happy, especially if he could _still_ contribute to giving them happiness, then he was able to do what many took for granted when it was the pain or someone they loved, and share it as if it were his own, to, in a sense, live vicariously through them.

Despite, or maybe in part _because_ of what his vanity and general haughtiness about his intellect may suggest, he didn't really have that high an opinion of themselves and odds are, if he'd talked to a person long enough to be seriously interested in them, he'd already have a complex bundle of guilt about supposedly ruining their lives, regardless of whether his actual impact on their lives under account of the circumstances was actually negative, positive or overall... mixed.

Then, there was the matter of his age – given that Time Lords were simply a relatively long-lived species, it was more or less unavoidable that nearly _anyone_ he came across would be vastly younger than himself; (Then, of course, there had been Romana, with whom there had _still_ been a significant disparity in age and experience, if, to his embarrassment, _not_ in engineering skills) Other Time Lords had been somewhat unavailable as of late, and even back when they weren't, that stagnant society with its largely stuffy, detached and condescending people were something he'd run away from, and never felt the slightest bit inclined to return to.

It has to be said that sometimes, the best indicator of who someone is and what is important to them is not where they come from and the people they got stuck with, but the people they _chose_ to surround themselves with, those who caught their attention, the ones that evoked empathy, sympathy or admiration in them.

Even if he didn't have that particular fondness for their home world, after certain points in time, humanity was simply spread out all over the universe, and one was likely to encounter them wherever they went. So if he went out there and met people, some of which then manage to impress him, chances are that some of them will be human either way; While he had his fair share of Alzarians, Trakenites and tin dogs tagging along and was always open to all forms of life, as it stood, most of his friends were human, what he'd call co-workers or comrades, much of what he'd come to consider his family and, in the end, probably shared more in common with that with most of his actual blood relatives... So it should not have been surprising that most of his lovers had been human as well, simply because most of the people around him were.

Both the species and age differences were just something he'd have to deal with as a consequence of the life he led –

but it certainly contributed to the way he was always very quick to give them up for the sake of their happiness, more so than even selflessness could justify.

Still, there were always circumstances that made it easier than others.

If he really_ liked _suitor option B, if he was courageous, dependable and willing to compromise, everything she needed and what he himself wished he _could_ be, and, just to top it off, the happy couple made it clear that they still wanted him in their lives as their friend, champion, or even a part of their family, well, perfect! Time would just let the inconvenient feelings dissipate on both sides dissipate, he'd come to care in a different capacity, concern himself with giving them happiness, and find someone else for... the other stuff, and it all works out fine for everyone involved.

Another sort of comfort or consolation prize that... at least allowed him to exit the stage with his ego intact, or his comfortable illusions, should he feel the need to indulge in them in some lonely, pitiful moment. A lookalike, a promising young activist explicitly described as a younger version of him, a suspiciously loud-and-brusque-yet-heroic warrior king, an actual duplicate... he could deal with that, he could deal, and still tell the portions of himself that were childish enough to think in such terms that he'd still "won", or could have, or at least had a confirmation that she'd... liked him, too. He could deal. The flip side of that coin was a sharp pain that twisted the knife further, a sense of betrayal he had no business feeling, distraught over losing a chance that might have been real, yet hurt that the other person would chose an 'easier' suitor, basically similar but without all those confusing, edgy alien bits to deal with, even when that was exactly what he'd wanted to give them, even personally orchestrated... and that, too, just affirmed his belief that he was right to leave.

But one shouldn't need an 'ego boost' to cope with doing-the-obviously-right-thing to begin with. And maybe a better, more honest person wouldn't.

There was, however, a difference between choosing to do what he probably should, and being able to turn off one's feelings with a button; He was rather like Clara in that respect, although she'd probably like to contest that, given that his own encounters with the green eyed beast tended to be _amazingly_ more blatant, to the point that they were moderately annoying rather than flattering.

He did only slightly mind when she got cozy with any of the locals of a place they were going to leave soon anyway, or heard her mention going on dates in-between trips, although he was not exactly beneath a little playful sabotage, but that was because he was an arrogant jackass and didn't see any of this as a 'serious threat'.

Anyone who legitimately drew her attention away from him was another story.

Oh sure, he might make a token effort to play nice, but when he found a pretext not to hold back, ("Must be a robot!") she _would _wind up practically smelling the testosterone, or whatever the Time Lord equivalent of that delightful little chemical happened to be.

Even when he was perfectly willing to bow out gracefully, it took a conscious effort to dial down the smartass and stop competing. Part of it was probably just being a showoff by nature, for its own sake, before impressing anyone specific even came into the picture.

Something he also was: Desperate, at times. Like when he did not want to lose the first speckle of thorough happiness he had grasped after the Time War, or whenever he was around Clara, because he was _always_ desperate when it came to her, more than he would, or even could ever show.

She was the person who brought out that side in him, the heated and passionate bordering on obsession – Because she is the one who had witnessed his secrets and seen him as he really was, at first, through accident and necessity, later, because he trusted her, then, because he _wanted_ her to know. For the first time in his long life, he not only trusted, but _wanted_ someone to know exactly who he really was, wanted her to see him, only him, all of him, from his unpolished surface to his rotten core.

She had stayed at his side to support him, through the days of boon and the lean times, and while she did struggle with him, she never left his side for long. She was the existence that appeared before him in his days of doubt and darkness, and each time, she had her way to stir the embers of all that was still _alive _inside of him, and this was why he kept wanting her all for himself, wanting all of her, always, endlessly _wanting _even long after he had given up.


	8. Paths

**[Paths]**

There had never been room for any pretense of "before", not for either of them. They had been entwined from the very beginning, feeling and breathing the evidences and consequences of the other's existence in this world all around them all the way from where their paths first began, on the opposite sides of the milky way, the eventual inevitability of their coming together in an universe that contained them both sending ripples deep into the past and far into the future.

It had, however, taken them both some time to connect the dots and notice just that, so that period of unawareness might be used to pinpoint or define something like "a time before their paths crossed", before he had taken notice of the the girl with those clear and unhesitating eyes, whose seeming certainty in questions of what she wanted was bound to leave a firm impression on an aimless vagabond like himself –

Although she had begun to guide the course of her life onto clearly defined rails from a young age, studiously strivng towards the top spots of her priority list, she had spent much of that time absorbing, first her mother's tales, stories and anecdotes, then books and articles, from physical depictions and examinations on the subject, to guidebooks by amateurs and professional psychologists alike, because, of course, you could never be prepared enough, and all these things weren't just helpful for one's own application, but as another part of a clearly laid out model of how this world was supposed to work and what drove the people inside them to their actions, which could then be used to predict or analyze, and ultimately dispense sufficiently helpful counsel, comfort to the people around her; That there might have been a component beyond wanting to help and get things right, to hear the sound of her own voice sprouting clever things and be looked up to by her friends, to join into the discussions of the adults around her and have them praise her father for his mature and sensible daughter... that did not occur to her at the time, although she was certainly aware of, and deliberate in her cultivation of an objective, perhaps more detached perspective that was closer to the undiminished yet unembellished truth of what existed out there.

Regardless, casual conversation and the feedback garnered from that was the most she had gathered in terms of feedback data; In her high school days, she had been concerned with things other than the practical application of those ideas, and the relative degree of maturity found in most of her classmates gave her little incentives to change that; It wasn't that she looked down on anyone who wasn't excessively shallow or pointlessly air-headed, and even those cases, she could calmly identify as a mere case of being need of some growing up; Rather, she usually wound up being the big-sister like figure in any given group of her peers, the sort you could always count on or help when you were being harassed or needed help with your homework, but perhaps perceived as a little too distant and serious to address in a completely casual manner.

While she did have a few admirers, they were mostly resigned to doing their admiring from a distance, thinking her too distant, too focused to be attained.

When the subject came up between the other students, the general consensus was that the person who could sway her heart, and more importantly, have any hope of keeping a tight hold on it when they had to share it with the thinkers of old, the heroes of myth and the lure of the foreign lands her faraway thoughts existed in, would have to be cut from the same cloth as her, a displaced old soul, and an interesting list of other requirements in which to match her, although no one could be sure of its exact contents; In all of her life, there were very few people that Clara Oswald had ever made privy to all of her secrets, in most cases, it might even be a fairly useful working hypothesis to say "none".

Although she was reasonably popular and generally well-liked (but never one of those focal points that stood in the middle of gossiping crowds, wearing the clothes everyone else was trying to imitate), she rarely had any really close friends her own age, seeing as her interests were never very much like those of most other school girls, either. She couldn't really relate to their squealing outrage over various actors or musicians that she covertly found rather dreadful even then.

After school, she went straight for university. No dawdling, no 'orientation phase', no party break, her decision had been made a long time ago and ever since, she had merely been waiting for the moment in time when she would physically set her plans into motion – While she still had her mother's keepsake book in the topmost drawer underneath her desk and her yearning for the wider world stashed away in her dreams (and unaware that this choice would indirectly lead to said dreams being shelved, and then, much later, reprised beyond her wildest fantasies, as if to reward her willingness to wait), but, first things first, even if her relatives _wouldn't_ most likely just _scream _if it occurred to her to do it the other way around and go chasing pipe dreams before obtaining some proper, solid education that would guarantee her a future; Those were _her_ priorities, too, having things assured and reasonable expectations of employment to fall back on, and really, her father's at the time quite newly acquired wife had not scored any points for assuming otherwise the very moment she's ever first _mentioned_ her intentions of seeing the world at some point.

It wasn't just the _nerve_ of her to dare opine on this, to squeeze herself in like she somehow had a say in this like she was actually trying to pose as a replacement for the most irreplaceable person, Clara was already familiar with that and the usual game of trying not to be... allergic to the woman and see things that aren't there, what constituted a rather particular kind of insult were the however implied allegation that she lacked ambition, or hid behind modesty, because she wanted to become a teacher, in spite of how she could supposedly "do anything" with grades like hers. That was _personal_ and evoked spite she didn't want to be capable of, but couldn't quite put away in any way that would have been honest and consistent.

It wasn't just the ridiculing as her chosen path as some sort of settling for less, that she _dared_ doubt the ambition that drove her forward every day – as much as that, in itself constituted a deadly insult to her as someone who very much pursued what she wanted with all her energy, even if it wasn't as likely to bring her money, power and glory as destinations that were more commonly associated with "ambition"; Maybe the things she wanted weren't what others wanted, or what other might arrogantly decree to be what she _should_ want, but she did really want it and pursue it along clear, systematic priorities – yet, as far as that went, that was something she could at least defend from others through outrage, to show them all up with every bit of success and fulfillment she'd derive from her work, whether anyone else could appreciate or acknowledge that or not, without even necessarily having to admit to being annoyed – but something about the words, especially that bit about 'everything else she could do with her grades' , had tugged at some further wound, a deeper thing that was not as easily dismissed, because it did not come with any such clear solution she could invest into to work towards make it all go away, a paradoxical little feeling that had unwelcomely entered her thoughts, breached her consciousness once it escaped from those parts and stretches of her being that she hadn't even known she had been sealing away; Not until she met the man who watered them with care and fed them harsh fertilizer.

It was a thought born from the same place that had birthed her desire to travel and see the world to begin with, a hunger for more that was not quietly slumbering, but creating ripples and waves as it dreamed away wherever she had stuffed it when she put it away for the moment: Just because she had chosen one path, that didn't mean that she had been completely blind to any others, or never even considered a world beyond her immediate surroundings. Of course she did, of course she had; Try as she might to suppress it, her eyes had gone wide when she'd first sorted through the university's pamphlets, leaflets and its long, associated list of all the wildly different things one could mayor in nowadays, and, for brief moments, she had imagined herself in many different roles and futures that each of those different possible paths could lead her into. She could go for business management and become the head of a large company, putting her smarts and dominant personality to good use to cleave herself a path through that dog-eat-dog, male-dominated world; She considered computer science _exactly_ because she didn't know the first thing about computers, (given that her need of quiet one-on-one entertainment was mostly satisfied by her books) but sort of always wished she did, if only she would find the time to indulge her curiosity as far as it would go. There was something inside her that longed for those possibilities, that wanted to feel and experience – well, not 'everything' per se, there were plenty of things in the world that she didn't have the slightest interest in, but, of the things she chose to have in her life, as much as possible. Her dreams of seeing foreign lands were yet another expression of that, and as much as she tried not to, she did lament the paths not taken, the things she still wanted even though she'd given them up in favor of others that she wanted even more;

Sometimes (Oh the irony) she wished she could live ten lives instead of just one, so she could be born in ten different cities, be raised in ten different cultures, have ten different professions, live and experience ten different times, read ten lifetimes' worth of books... and fall in love with the same person every single time.

Because, of all the stories she had read or heard, the one that had impacted her the most at this point in her life was that of her parents.

She found Sunday school quite entertaining, alright, it was interesting to see how the same old stories with emotionally ambiguous, undefined characters could come to mean so much, and yet, so different things to many people; But any belief she might ever have had in impossible heroes, fairytales, silly ghost stories and rubish such as "fate" or "destiny" had been short-lived at best; She certainly wouldn't spent her life hung up on unrealistic sappy love stories as the media commonly tried to sell them – then again, she didn't have to, because she had at least one love story that she knew to be _real_, as surely truthful as the fact that she'd been conceived, that she _ever_ existed in this world to move about and speak and touch things; The story of her parents was not an idealized puff of smoke no one could actually attain, but a honest, undeniable glimpse at what people could actually attain in this world, if they were ready to prove themselves when it counted, a "soulmate" not as something that falls into your lap if you wait long enough , but something that can be made to happen through the right choices and actions.

Clara Oswald, as a general principle, did not wait for happiness to be given; Rather, she would take off running and chase after it for herself, or at the very least, those obscure keys and magical doorways through which that elusive substance might be acquired and imported.

Sure, she prided herself of being a conscious citizen of the 21st century, of trying to see past people's sweet-talk and decorations right to their intentions; As an university student, she found herself in a very different microcosm than the one at school, a place filled with interesting, accomplished people full of potential, but also immature youths; Even then, she tried her best to be self-sufficient and make her own way in life, so she worked in a bar to support herself instead of relying on her father's money or burdening anyone else (although getting away from his wife was _also_ an incentive to start living on her own as soon as possible), and in that environment, the practiced use of her charms became yet another thing to be understood and mastered so she could excel at it and use it as a means of controlling the world around her. She learned to flirt and mesmerize, to keep people guessing at all times and add an enchanting tinge of warmth to her steely demeanor from her school days, but also how to apply the appropriate caution and never make herself too obvious, to even turn those hard-to-hide quirks of hers into a strategical advantage:

Clara Oswald, professional tease.

It was _because_, and not _despite _her way of wanting it all out of life that she found ways to squeeze those pursuits somewhere between work and her studies, sacrificing less essential things like relaxation if she had to, and while she did have a couple of fleeting encounters, silently nursed crushes on some of the professors and even one or two people she felt might have become _more,_ a spirited, if flighty girl with streaks of pink in her hair and a man with a proud preference for black turtlenecks and philosophic conversations, but when it came to taking things to a serious territory, she still very much believed in that story, a solid, founded belief she saw as justified by her very existence; Details that didn't fit in, addendums introduced by later events such as her father's remarriage were not even swept under the rug, but as things that she would do better, things she would _get right_ when her chance came; She'd decided that when she'd really fall in love, she would fall in love once and forever and never say these three words to a second person ever again or ever before, without even _considering_ any kind of affairs or parallel constructs as something she'd have to think about as long as she didn't plan on cheating on anyone, and she certainly didn't, nor did she see how things could complicate themselves without her consent, after all, it should be perfectly possible given that it already happened once:

Boy meets girl, girl saves boy's life and really impresses him in the process, boy shows up at girl's doorstep with a massive crush, boy and girl come to see that hey actually happen to have a lot in common, and at the end, he uses a token from their first meeting to affirm the value she, and she alone has for him, and she'll know he's the right one by the way he makes her feel special, like he has made her the center of his world whenever they were together...

And in some ways, that idea of hers wasn't completely unfounded; Of course things could go like this, for some people, maybe even most people at least in theory, people who didn't fall in love with a person from a book and found all the wonders they could ever want in their immediate vicinity. But not _all_ people.

The world was big, the world was unfair, the world was full of strange corners, dark alleyways and inhabited shadows; It was a place where unpredictable, random events might waltz in unannounced at any time of the day, and sometimes, boy doesn't meet girl until after he's been through a long and convoluted story with shadowy beginnings and an uncertain end. Sometimes, girl saves boy's life and makes a big impression of him in the process, but thanks to the wonders of time travel, she has no clue that she has done, or will do that by the time boy shows up at her doorstep with a massive crush already in place, and they both begin circling each other in a wild courtship dance of suspicion. Sometimes, boy and girl don't meet until they are already man and woman and have to confront the circumstances that made them that way. Sometimes people misunderstand, people lose their temper, people grow apart, people get separated by accidents, and sometimes, people just die, with no greater purpose and narrative behind it. Sometimes you run into the wrong guy first. Sometimes, you run into whoever is suitable for this segment of your life but not necessarily the next. Sometimes feelings refuse to be controlled, whether it is to make yourself like someone who should by all means be the right, ideal choice, or whether we can't stop loving someone tainted and flawed. Sometimes, people try their best to get things right, but cannot make each other stay because they simply don't want the same things out of life, without either of the having to be an irredeemable asshole for that. Sometimes people even part ways even though neither of them really wishes to part because neither feels ready for the other yet, and even rarer, sometimes these same people and end up at each other's doorsteps again and again, time after time, no matter what convoluted circles, spirals and pretzels their paths have led them down in the meantime.

But none of that was a real, tangible part of Clara's life yet.

And that was her, before _he_ came, some dreams shelved, some plans derailed, but still very certain that she was consistently living her life along the guidelines and priorities she had laid out; In the end, what put a stop to her dreams of working as a teacher _and_ traveling the world was the very same thing that, much later, eventually made her give up the traveling once she actually got to it: The thought that a friend in need would be better off if she staid behind.

Not that she had given up, though; She may not yet have had access to the luxury of a time machine that would allow her to do it all at once, but she _never_ had the intention of giving any of it up, her mother's book remained in her drawer waiting to be filled with mementos of future travel, and her diploma was right beneath it, waiting for her first class of students. She would get to it eventually, for it was what sh wanted to do - She had good reasons to want it and she was damn proud of them: Being an English teacher was probably the closest one could get to those times her mother, her _actual_ mother had read or told her stories as a child, and somehow get paid for it, and perhaps as such, a more systematic, posher version of that, but at heart, rather the same thing, in the role of a caregiver who'd lead those malleable young individuals full of potential through the harsh experience that adolescence could be as un-stifled in their personalities and as harnessed in their potential as possible. She knew very well how harsh it could be, when the sudden loss of her mother turned what was already an unsteady time of transformations and transitions into the most horrible feeling of having nowhere left to turn to, no one to share their thoughts with, adrift and horribly lost like a wayward boat that had been cut loose from the harbor, waiting to sink with no one around to recor it or retain the memory, alone with the painful awareness that the person who normally came and found her, the person who promised to find her every time would never look for her again... The structuring influence of coming to school every day had at least given her something to focus on, small, compartmentalized tasks in the scope of which everything could be perfect and alright even if her life as a whole wasn't. Throwing herself into her studies had given her a way to take back control of her life, to do something other than just curl up with a book and retreat into herself, to move forward even through her tears, and through her example, become for others what her mother had been for her, and spare them the experience, the sensation of endless fall, at least to an extent, and in that way, it would be as if Eleanor Allison Oswald were still physically affecting the world, doing what she was always best at doing – Although nothing of her dynamic, self-aware consciousness remained in this world and no new pages would be added to her stories, there was still a lifetime's worth of what she had left behind in _information_, the static, hollow negative of her imprint on the world as it could be reconstructed from all she had ever communicated_. _Words, statements, expressions of feelings and beliefs, from which some traits could be abstracted and packed into neat symbols of sound and language, memories of patterns of what she would do in various situations, what she might do in any given one_, _preserved in memories, blueprints, genes,_ recipes,_ which, given physical vessels or willing channelers to act upon the world as embers of her will, and the chance to act as such alone made this path worth choosing, given that this was probably the closest experience to encountering her that was left in this world after her death.

And then, there was the aspect of a mentor's standpoint - Clara had loved books ever since she was a little girl so it just fit, from an angle as simple as working with something she loved and wanting to share her passions, to acquaint others the way the enjoyment of a story could increase if you knew to appreciate the detail and craftsmanship that had gone into creating it. The power of words to convey revolutionary ideas change minds and send shock waves through societies and how to use it as your tool and make yourself heard.

She recalled some distinct experiences she had not too long after she became able to read stories by herself (which was earlier than you'd perhaps expect), when she would go to gush about them to her family or the other kids; It was, perhaps, the definitive moment that first led her to notice that her ability to spot patterns, draw connections and pay attention to detail was anything beyond the usual, and with it, to this feeling that she might not really be suited to the world in her immediate surroundings. She would notice all those little patters and ironies in a story, the structure and architecture of how it was constructed and arranged or, in less fortunate cases, just plain holes and inconsistencies, and when she went to share that with the people around her, she got only confusion or placating smiles and nods in reply, and was forced to make the harsh conclusion that many of the people she very much wanted to keep looking up there would never understand – Her mother and gran each told her, in different ways, that this meant she was somehow 'gifted', but at the time, it did not feel like a 'gift' at all, merely a reason to feel alone and misplaced – and the experience certainly influenced how she handled her charges, but also the path she would take, when it was a book that showed her a way to put into words what her expansive, yet still immature mind had long understood, but not quite processed.

The person who ultimately did her the favor of finding the words to make sense of that hazy cloud of unordered feelings was a long dead man from another country, reaching through to her using the pages of a book: Michael Ende's "Momo". So there was the strange young girl with her gift for _listening_, to simply give people's words the space they needed to lead to epiphanies and support them through her mere presence (an ability that Clara certainly wished she could have), being shown the secrets of time by the old, yet young master of its domain, and waking up after the year that the words to describe those sights had needed to mature within her, finding herself in a strange, changed world where all her friends had been led astray by the villains, alone with no one to turn to, and worse, no one to tell of the wonders she had seen, and it was at this point of the book that both Momo, and Clara (from outside of the pages) arrived at the conclusion that even the most precious treasures could become a curse if you had no one to share them with (an important insight that would come in rather handy later in her life). She also familiarized herself with the man's other works, most notably "The Neverending Story", and while she was quite awed at the time, and never stopped admiring the wealth of imagination found in those books, she later concluded that she didn't necessarily agree with all of the philosophies presented therein; Clara was all for approaching children as emergent individuals very much capable of deeper thoughts rather than unfinished half-beings whose opinions were to be dismissed so they could be shaped into something useful, but she also came to feel that the naivety and supposed "innocence" of childhood (that, in reality, was just what the veil of nostalgia plastered over careless cruelty born from ignorance) was nothing to be romanticized or idealized, but a _hurdle_ that was a simple result of the inexperience that adults were to compensate for to allow the child to otherwise participate in life as best as they could at their stage of maturity.

It was also around that time that she first came into contact with the books of Amelia Williams with their themes of feeling out of place, chasing to fulfill one's dreams in a harsh, unfair world and finding the particular beauty in half-broken, dysfunctional things, and Clara came to love them right from the captivating wordings of their introductory paragraphs that had drawn her in immediately. While Mrs. Williams was best known for her work on books for children or adolescents, like the brilliant "Summer Falls", Clara's favorite was one of her more serious works, a thick, more obscure door-stopper that the author had composed late in life. From her later point of view as someone who engaged in the analysis of literature for a living, it's most notable particularities were perhaps the way it recounted the life stories of the four protagonists from their shared childhood in a little English village late into their adult lives, often recounted using clever, non-obvious techniques including short, artsy interludes, anachronic order and the presentation conflicting accounts from multiple, possibly equally skewed viewpoints, and a few impressive twists, one for example including the protagonist's devoted husband in the 'future' chapters, and the question of how he comes about – in fact, the character in question is introduced quite early, as one of the two barely distinct boys that seem to exist as generic friends for the principal character to emote towards, but if you look back at the earlier chapters after the big reveal, you'll notice that he was always there to support her and listen to her various troubles, a fact that the reader is probably intended to notice roughly when the protagonist herself does.

There is certainly much to be analyzed, it is the sort of book that one might need to read twice to catch all the hints and parallelism once more, with clarity, and had prepared two different layers of ideas and impressions for the first and second read through to make that work rewarding by way of allowing for many belated realizations, but what spoke to Clara the most when she read it for the very first time, with her analytical skills present but as of then not quite as honed, were probably the engaging characters – not so much the main character herself, although Clara did like her and emphasize with her in some ways, such as her love for misunderstood artists and her desire for something beyond her orderly little world, they were ultimately rather different – While she preferred order and control, the book's protagonist was rather wild and hated to be structured or tied down in any way and a definite rebel; She was a cool idea for a book, but had she been real, Clara would probably have found her and her friends to be rather reckless and irresponsible at times, with only husband-guy to provide a babysitter of sort for the other tree, although he was ever so easily dragged along by the others.

The one character that really captivated her at the time was the de-facto _deuteragonist_, whom the book named as "Jonathan Smythe". While protagonist-girl did briefly consider him for a summer fling in high school before she got together with the afore mentioned husband-guy (and Jonathan himself wound up with an impossibly glamorous wife, later revealed to be one and the same with protagonist-girl's even crazier, somewhat troubled older sister from the earlier chapters – the fourth main character), their overall bond was probably better described as two children who met on the playground and decided to go make mischief together; While he disclosed little about himself, it seemed that he was also by himself, also didn't quite fit in, and, like protagonist-girl, had a keen eye for the going-ons that everyone around them just overlooked or lacked the courage and fortitude needed to refrain from denying a proven reality with uncertain, impossible consequences – Later on, they both have to deal with the various consequences of the fact that neither of them are children anymore.

And since Clara wasn't one, either, she wouldn't go as far as to wish or hope that this might happen to her, too, that she might meet a stranger just like herself with whom she could share her thoughts and observations, her passions and her lunacies, although the thought was obviously worth treasuring. As it turned out, this would be the first in a long line of things she had tried to control, or give up, but wound up happening anyways.

While the prominence of this general type of character in Mrs. Williams' works had many a loyal fan suspecting that she might have based them on a real person, perhaps "the one that got away", or an actual, close life-long friend of hers whose identity had been lost to obscurity, but never in her wildest dreams would Clara have suspected that she'd actually get to _meet_ the inspiration behind them... and, first impressions be damned, find him to be significantly less Peter Pan and a lot more Holden Caulfield, stubbornly wiping the graffiti from school property, rather lost and fallen by the wayside, an underachieving dropout fleeing the certainty of things he could no longer change on a destructive trajectory, manifesting his refusal to become part of the phoniness and fakery in the world around him in obstinate, at times rather counterproductive ways that could come off as rather random, given that he had not completely managed to stave off the infestation of his world's haughty hypocrisy himself, which, as Clara never thought she'd ever know from personal experience, was simply far too easy to slip into if you had been gifted with mixed blessing of being an incredible liar.

That cheeky brat... here they were, a perfectionist English teacher and a rebellious little miscreant all grown up, order versus chaos; They should have been natural enemies, but somehow they weren't, because sometimes, chaos needs someone to rein it in and tell it to be sensible, and sometimes, order needs something to challenge it and push it to its limits so it doesn't become trapped in stagnation, and after a while, they came to realize that they are bound together, just like light cannot be without shadow.

She had imagined "Jonathan" as a savvy, fearless boy who had all the rules of the world figured before most adults had, when she probably should have been picturing a paranoid, uncouth little thing that shivered in the dark just as anyone else and probably rarely left the house without wearing a smelly garland of garlic around his neck to ward off vampires from under the bed.

He just smirked when she said that, or implied as much as she could without revealing something that she could never tell him, that, in more ways than one, what he had spent centuries looking for had been at his side all along.

"I'm never going to live that one down, am I? Even the best researcher gets the occasional false positive, that's what the process of peer review is for, in other words, what I got _you_ for..." - as dismissive or irresponsible as that statement could have been taken, it did imply that he considered her a 'peer' of sorts, although this did not occur to her until later - "And for that matter, Vampires _are _for real, although the garlic thing is complete and utter rubbish."

"What? Seriously? _Vampires_?"

And just like that, he'll turn her around, from rolling her eyes to curious and exciting, seeing the seasoned wanderer that had sprung up in the place of the boy recount his past encounters with a variety of fearsome creatures with a cheeky edge unchanged by the years, naming various variants of bloodsucking monster and adding his speculations on just how, or why the local pudding-brains might have concocted the common myths from them, including, apparently, the ones he himself had heard recounted in childhood by an old hermit on his own homeworld, and for all his cocky flaunting of his experience grated her nerves, as much as she felt distinctly peeved for having been made to look silly and clueless when she meant to be making _him_ look that way, her genuine interest in asking about various specifics was stronger. Intrigued, she learned that symbols of faith apparently worked on some variations, and behold! : Even got a little bit of actual praise from him when he called her question of whether it was the Vampire's own faith or that of the would-be repeller that mattered, and how a non-believer would fare in either case, and heard him call that a _very_ good question.

As it turns out, it was faith _itself_, the mental state of feeling it, that caused the effect, and she heard him recount how a disillusioned war veteran with a bible had not succeeded, while a zealot with a communist badge _did_.

She never really expected an actual reply when as asked what _he_ had used to repel them, because he certainly wouldn't have answered back when she first met him, but to her surprise, he actually did, looking her in the eye with an unexpectedly serious frankness: He'd chanted the names of people like her, people who had come with him, friends, comrades, apprentices, lovers, people he worked with, people he got stuck with, children he took in, people who had shared his journey.

He then veered off into blatantly, clumsily trying to connect to her with a recollection of something they could snark about _together_ instead of at each other, an instance where he had met a batch of 'vampires' in medieval Venice, which, despite actually being fish-people, managed to have a lot more in common with actual vampires than certain modern renditions, (*sparkles*) and, incidentally, just in case he hadn't impressed her enough, he happened to have done that alongside Amelia not-yet-Williams and her husband-to-be, who, by the way, was also the inspiration behind the tale of the Lone Centurion (another of Clara's favorites), and... Professor Song's father? She'd met Amelia Williams' _Daughter_? Long story, obviously. Wow. Apparently, Clara had even met the Williamses herself, while she was in his time stream, but the Doctor asked her not to try to remember because, basically, the Daleks got her. It sucked, though, to have met her favorite writer, and not remember it. And how cool was that, that her closest friend actually knew her favorite writer... sure, he knew a lot of writers, one look at the man's library, or nowadays, his console room, would immediately tell you that while he may not look it, he was one hell of a bookworm, as much as Clara was, and she could imagine that he, too, had dreamed away most of his youth with his head buried in pages, and his fondness for Earth Culture apparently extended to its literature. So it was no small wonder that he had, one way or another, come across them all: Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, HG Wells... (although, as she had once embarrassingly found out, Jane Austen had _not_ been added to that list yet) but of course, the one he actually traveled with (turns out she was, ironically, Legs girl from the TARDIS' visual records. Not how she would have imagined her at all, but it sort of made her appreciate the catty time machine's sense of humor.) for a longer amount of time just_had_ to be Clara's favorite... that man. Like he was _made _for her, like even his flaws and imperfections were tailored to make her learn about herself and the world. The man she's saved, the man who'd rewarded her for that with his unending devotion and gratitude, who was all this even after he'd come a long, long way, walked a bizarre, anfractous path before he'd ended up right here, a path which twisted upon itself, which had bits of it scattered throughout time and space in no particular order, crossed and influenced many others, being influenced and redirected in turn, and, to say the least, could not be further a neat, orderly progression in the vein of 'Boy meets girl, and happily ever after' -

He kept dropping names then, of course, historical figures, important leaders from the future, names she she didn't know because they were part of that hidden, invisible world that everyone else chose to forget. Hunters of the paranormal, both organized and independent, and names she did know – Grant and Jovanka, the activists. She'd read about their efforts. Dorothy McShane the philanthropist, although the charity was, so he implied, probably a front for UNIT or the like, or maybe she working on her own from beneath her huge mansion (Clara had heard of her on TV before, and already thought her to be a pretty cool person before finding out she was basically Batman; She sort of wanted to go meet her one day, if he could be persuaded to drop by...) – His fingerprints had been all around the world she lived in every day, his handwriting plain to see for those who could recognize it, she merely had to notice...

And and interesting as all this may have been, as delightful as it was to be privileged to see through the facade and surface of what made up the world and begin to grasp the mechanisms and interconnections that kept it together and gave it its shape, there was an even more urgent thought that floated to the top in the ocean of her mind, something that gave her pause earlier and wouldn't be ignored or dismissed. Mention of Professor Song, or a famous love story that involved someone who had waited out a long separation... that made her recall Trenzalore. – And come to think of it, hadn't he half-deliriously mentioned an "Amelia" at the time, too?

All those concepts and associations floated around in the back of her mind and tugged at her consciousness in the form of a question, one that she dared not say out loud; She had already upset him enough, back in the day, no use in dragging out old sleeping dogs that could be comfortably ignored... instead, she asked something that, all things considered, was probably equivalent in at least some of its overall dimension of meaning, not necessarily a metaphor, but rather the opposite, an application of the principle that was even more fundamental:

"About the vampire stories, though... If you were that scared of all those freaky fairytales and creepy nursery rhymes, why'd you ask that hermit friend of yours to tell you _yet more_ creepy stories? Did you want to face your fears?"

"Face my fears, hah! That what _he_ spoke about at the time, but I didn't really understand what he meant until much later..."

Once again, she surmised that his younger self was better envisioned as what most would dismiss rather difficult instead of adorably precocious, any pretense of wisdom he may have _now _being the cumulative result of much harsh experience; He'd probably have fit right into her "gifted and talented" group.

"Then why, if it wasn't that?"

"Well, I supposed the monsters would get me anyway, whether I knew about them or not, and I'd rather know what hit me..."

"...and knowing you, you wouldn't pass up a chance to show off one last time before you get eaten."

"I suppose I don't have to tell a control freak _you_ about the inexplicable comfort some people find when they're able to slap labels, categories and explanations onto things..."

"So basically, knowledge is power?"

Right then, she didn't want to bother with returning his little jab.

"...Yep. And, once in a while, the stories about a given monster _do_ actually come with some useful information as to how to ward it off. Your garlic necklaces."

Judging by his expression, he fully expected her to laugh at this, or at least concoct some snarky retort, but instead, to his puzzlement, she reacted with a quiet, fond smile.

The sort of memory _that_ summoned up had nothing to do with silly boys, but rather, included the sight of a grown man who had finally found the power to turn his dreams and ambitions into reality, someone who had turned his defects into superpowers and his uniqueness into strength, the perfect picture of all she had been trying her hardest to become for most of her life, the scared little boy all grown up, out there doing the things only he could do, everything he was in full bloom –

("We surrender!")

Strange how... the recollections of a time they nearly parted and, for all intents and purposes, was mostly spend in a state of melancholy and regret whenever they weren't fearing for their lives would have become one of her fondest memories of _them_, a day on which she came to further refine her understanding of not only him, but also herself.

Once resolved, the conflicts and doubts of the time just seemed to fade into the background compared to what it felt like to snuggle up against his arm and rest her head on his shoulder, to be looked at with such tender, almost brittle expressions of longing, or those words she really shouldn't have said, but wouldn't take back for anything in the world.

It as a day on which she discovered yet another of the unexpected grains of truth in the many stories that had always filled her dreams, one of many such days that had followed the very first... discovery that had always been waiting for her, an encounter with the brooding menace and half-glimpsed mysteries of Captain Nemo coupled with the anarchic heroism of Robin Hood, standing up to become worthy of his muse , the power and experience of Merlin coexisting with the work an almost professionally practiced fool that could rival jesters like Till Eulenspiegel, the unwordly, detached calculations of Sherlock Holmes needing a Watson to explain them to the world, a person of abstract concerns and, at the same time, without even a necessary contradictions wells of hidden passion for the individual pieces that made up the larger picture, even just one, that were enough for his feelings toward one single girl to remain unextinguished over the centuries spent in the cold, lightless fields of Trenzalore, not unlike a like a certain Roman friend of his; The snobbish, socially unpolished exterior of Mr. Darcy waiting for a certain proud, discerning girl with high ideals to accept more shades of grey into her view of the world find the surprisingly caring person beneath, the Belle in the castle of the Beast, torn between something seemingly ideal that she _should_ want, but cannot be obtained without pretending to be something she is not, and someone dangerous, broken and flawed whom she's been frequently warned of, but would love and appreciate all of her just the way she is, as long as she were willing to return that favor... on the tragic quest of Lady Amalthea, old as life, old as the moon, yet, with a newness to her like she was not born yesterday, the very last, looking for the others that she would never fit back in with after the experiences of her long journey and her time among her mortal fellows, dreading the days she would carry the weight of knowing their names after they were long gone, her skin, face and hair already without a speck of color when she was still coming to terms with the form she found herself in, unsure of how to utilize her face and limbs to produce an expression, or how to even make sense of the feelings that were buzzing around inside all that, dreaming away her days when the others she sought for so long were just steps away, hidden inside the sea, trapped behind a crack, same thing, the same, bittersweet conclusion; A literature expert such as Clara would know that every bit as well as a hero like Prince Lir: They cannot be together, because the happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story, and this poses more and more of a problem the longer a story goes on.

Regardless, even knowing what this meant, Clara could never have forgiven herself if she had allowed this story to end on Trenzalore, not yet, not on her watch, not on either occasion –

After all, he was, if nothing else, her favorite story of them all.

**A/N: Haven't seen the special yet, but I will right now. Just trying to get this out before everything possibly changes... Expecting the worst and hoping the best... **

**EDIT: I've finally seen it. Turns out I didn't hope best enough. While I ship this so much it's embarassing, I never thought this would actually get cannon beyond the subtext level... but it did. It's cannon! Clara basically said she doesn't want a husband unless it's the Doctor, and he was like... "You'll never look any different to me" *dies* Expect new chapters shorty, this must be celebrated.**


End file.
